Public Accounts Committee on May 25th, 2015

[Andrew Marsland]

You did.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

All right, may I ask which one of the eight you feel that the department did not evaluate?

[Andrew Marsland]

It's the one I referred to, the first-time home buyers' tax credit.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

It's the home buyers' tax credit. Thank you. I must have just missed that.

The Auditor General makes the point that there is a distinction between monitoring and evaluation, so I want to be clear about whether or not, when you tell us the department did evaluate seven of those eight programs, you do mean evaluate, not simply monitor?

[Andrew Marsland]

I do, yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

By that I take you to mean from your opening remarks that your monitoring does in fact result in identifying potential issues with the tax system and also ensures that the tax system performs as intended. Is that correct?

[Andrew Marsland]

That's correct.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I want to be certain about whether there is any issue with wording here. I would have preferred you to say that the monitoring does identify potential issues with any particular tax expenditure, or does in fact ensure that every particular tax expenditure performs as intended. Is that what you mean, or are you just talking about the tax system generally?

[Andrew Marsland]

I'm not sure.... I mean, the tax system is a collection of those individual measures—

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Yes.

[Andrew Marsland]

—so we're looking at those individual measures.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Let me ask it more specifically, then. When you monitored and evaluated the mineral exploration tax credit, did your evaluation lead you to a conclusion about whether that program was performing as intended?

[Andrew Marsland]

Yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

What I gather from your action plan, then, is that while you are telling us, and it's your evidence, that in fact you are monitoring and evaluating tax expenditure programs, it may be that you could improve how that monitoring is formalized and documented. Is that correct?

[Andrew Marsland]

I think what we're saying is that our view is that we effectively evaluate tax measures, that we monitor appropriately and so on, but we accept that we need to be able to demonstrate that, both to others and to ourselves—

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Right.

[Andrew Marsland]

—so we will systematically look at our work and make sure there are no gaps, and to the extent that there are gaps, we will make sure they're filled.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

This is actually a very excellent function that the Auditor General's office provides, in that it's not infrequent that departments are doing things and are just not able to document them in a way that demonstrates they're doing them. I understand that this is the point of your evidence on this.

I also understand that this process design will be completed by the summer of this year and implemented during the fall of this year. Is that correct?

[Andrew Marsland]

That's correct.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

It seems like kind of an ambitious timetable to me. Are you pretty certain that it will be accomplished?

[Andrew Marsland]

We've committed to do that, and we will do it.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

So you'll burn the midnight oil. Thank you.

[Andrew Marsland]

Thank you.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Do I have time left?

The chair is busy, so that means I have time left.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!