Public Accounts Committee on April 21st, 2016

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you all for your participation today.

I have to tell you, what a shemozzle. It's the only word that comes to mind. It's just a total shemozzle. You have to wonder where the minister and deputy minister were in the wheelhouse. Were they sleeping?

I want to start at the beginning, because I've been around here a very long time—some might say too long. However, be that as it may, I've seen a lot of sophisticated tools come through, used by some incredibly intelligent, professional people who can do amazing things before anything starts. I'm talking about the planning. Parts of this we've been doing now, as a government, for the better part of half a century.

Again, similar to what we were dealing with in the armed forces when they didn't seem to be able to provide adequate housing for their people, when we're talking about infrastructure to distribute benefits that people need in order to live, you'd think there would be a little better planning at the front end. I'm really going to make an issue out of this, because I want to know why. All of you are on notice. I want to know how the hell we got here. We'll deal with what it resulted in and the mess that came as a result, but I want to know how the hell we got from the point of putting a plan on paper to move forward, and then for it to fail so spectacularly.

I don't need to build the case—it's there in itself—but let's start with the Auditor General's opening remarks.

He said that once established, the tribunal was not ready to handle the inherited backlog of 6,585 CPPD appeals. It did not have the people, systems, or procedures in place to deal with its workload. For example, the tribunal expected to start operating with 96 employees; it only had 21 when it opened.

Madame Brazeau said, “Suffice it to say that we were understaffed and under-resourced. There were no infrastructure, systems, or operational processes to manage the income security caseload, and we were overwhelmed by a huge backlog of 9,000 appeals from the former tribunals. Close to 7,000 of these appeals were the Canada pension plan disability appeals.”

The heading in the Auditor General's report on page 16 says, “Poor transition planning by the department led to the transfer of an unmanageable backlog of appeals to the Social SecurityTribunal of Canada”.

I could go on and on. When we look at examples, the auditor said:

We found that although the Department established a plan to transition CPPD appeals to the Tribunal, the plan included unrealistic target dates and planning assumptions. This led to a backlog of appeals that the Tribunal was not ready to manage....

It's so plain. The planning assumption was that the new Social Security Tribunal regulations were supposed to be approved in November 2012. They were approved on March 28, four days before the tribunal began its work. Somebody give me some reason as to how one of the biggest departments in Canada planned a new system to correct an old system that wasn't working, and when it took over, it was worse than the one it took over. How did that happen? Who's responsible?

Let's start with the deputy.

[Ian Shugart]

Mr. Chairman, that is exactly the right place to start. I was the deputy minister during this period of time, and I take responsibility for what happened in the department during this time.

I'm not going to repeat the diagnosis that you have just made. As I indicated, the department accepts the findings and the recommendations of the Auditor General. The bottom line is that with respect to the planning of the new tribunal I would indicate, just on your point that the subsequent situation is worse than what was there before, that where we are today puts a bit into question that assertion. We are in fact today in a better place than under the four previous tribunals that were in place. The issue is the transitional period, where I do not dispute your assertion.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I appreciate that.

I have limited time. I'm sorry; I don't mean to be rude.

I appreciate that and I respect that, but I'm not accepting that since it wasn't very good in the transition, the idea was that we would kind of look the other way, and then we'll go forward.

We are the public accounts committee, and you are accountable, and I want to know how you oversaw something that was so poorly transitioned.

[Ian Shugart]

I want to go on, Chair, to—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very well. Please.

[Ian Shugart]

—speak to two specific components of the planning that in retrospect were faulty.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay.

[Ian Shugart]

We made unrealistic assumptions. I think one of those may very well have been about the time it would take to get everything in place. We were too ambitious in the planning assumption about the time it would take to get this done.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You blew everything, sir, everything. There were no adequate systems, procedures, or service standards. You completely blew it.

I would get it, if it were one little thing and gee, we thought it would take us six months, but it ended up taking us a year. The whole thing wasn't there, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We need to make sure that we take this through the chair each time. It's great to just chat, but we want all questions and answers to come through the chair, please.

[Ian Shugart]

I agree, Chair. That's my security in this case, if nothing else.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Fair enough, Chair—and Mr. Shugart.

[Ian Shugart]

There is an awful lot in reality that flows from the timing assumptions that were made, so it is a significant error when you get the planning assumption wrong about timing.

The second thing is that we did not have complete information about the caseload. That's another critical piece of information. If you don't know how high the mountain is, you're not going to be preparing adequately to climb it. Partly because of the independent structure of the previous tribunal, we did not have complete information about what was in the caseload already. That then was inherited unfairly by the new tribunal.

In summary, Chair, I accept the charge. If the committee has views about the responsibility of the deputy minister, I would be happy to take them up with the minister to whom I am accountable, but our emphasis at the moment is on getting this right.

I do not, however, dispute your assertion about the planning problems, and I have offered two specifics to provide somewhat your answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much. We're more than a minute over.

We'll now go to Mr. Lefebvre.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Chair, thank you.

I'd like to continue with the line of questioning with respect to when all this started—the amalgamation of four tribunals into one.

Paragraph 6.40 of the Auditor General's report says:

The Tribunal's creation was announced in Budget 2012 as part of the Department's Deficit Reduction Action Plan. The Plan was intended to reduce departmental costs by streamlining programs and services.

Mr. Shugart, what were the planned savings from amalgamating from four to one?

[Ian Shugart]

They were $25 million, if I remember correctly.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Okay.

Was your budget reduced by that much, when you initially started?

[Ian Shugart]

Yes. The way the system operates, Chair, is that when a government makes a decision about funding levels on the basis of predictions or program demand or whatever it might be, that is reflected in the reference levels of the department, and it will be ultimately reflected in the public accounts. The planned savings are adjusted in the reference levels of the department. They're removed from the department's budget.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

So when you initially started in 2012-13 with the new tribunal, your budget had been reduced by $25 million at that point in time.

[Ian Shugart]

That's correct.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

In the Auditor General's opening statement we read:

...the Tribunal expected to start operating with 96 employees, but had only 21 in place when it opened.

First, when you had the four tribunals, how many employees did you have, all of them put together, and why did we go to 21?

Please go ahead, Monsieur Long.

[Benoît Long, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Processing and Payment Services Branch, Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Unfortunately, I do not have the information on the number of employees who were attached to the four existing tribunals and how many we went from and to, but clearly there was a reduction in the number of employees who were attached to and had been supporting those four tribunals. That was part of the intent.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Well, if you estimated that you had to start with 96 employees, where did that estimate come from? Was it based on the number of employees you had before in all four tribunals?

[Ian Shugart]

I think the key issue—maybe Muriel could add to this—is the number of decision-makers, the number of adjudicators. That was one of the key shortfalls, the number of adjudicators who would be—

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

How do we go from the adjudicators assigned to the four tribunals to 21? Is that what we are talking about here? Is it from 96 adjudicators to 21 adjudicators?

Is that no? Are those employees in total?