Public Accounts Committee on April 21st, 2016

[Ian Shugart]

Well, Chair, because the preceding tribunal did not tell us.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It's just that simple.

[Ian Shugart]

It's that simple, sir.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Without being too judgmental, it sounds like incompetence on that side of the equation.

[Ian Shugart]

These tribunals enjoy a position of independent operation. It was judged, as I understand it, that part of that reality was that the department—which, remember, has its decisions being reviewed by that tribunal—was not privy to the caseload and the rate of resolution of the cases. After the fact, the caseload was growing during that period between the announcement of the new tribunal and when the Social Security Tribunal began.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I would pursue that, but I don't have time, first of all, and secondly it leads us up to the fact that the other organization wasn't at all working the way it should. By the way, you might want to think about making the last part of your career in diplomacy. That was a great answer.

I have another factual question, deputy. In your action plan, you have all kinds of deadlines, and many of them are around March and June of this year. We're past March. Did you meet all those deadlines, and are you on track to meet your June deadlines?

[Ian Shugart]

Yes, we have, and yes, we are.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very good. Do I have any more time, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You do.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you so much.

I'll come back to Madam Brazeau.

Yyou suggested you're comfortable, and even happy—that's my word—that there are 11 decisions when the auditor report was putting 10 down as the expectation.

The original plan from the department was that each tribunal member would complete 29 decisions per month. You're at 11, and you're happy, but the plan was 29, so again—you may not be able to answer this, and I may need the deputy to step back in—how did we get so far from 29 being the happy point to 11 now being the happy point?

[Murielle Brazeau]

As you know, I was not in charge of the planning, so I'm not sure how they came up with the 29. I do know that when we did our estimate and came up with 10 per month per member, we did this based on an objective study. In 2014 we conducted a baseline study that was looking at the members' capacity, meaning how many decisions they could make and what kinds of resources were required for the—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Sorry. May I interrupt? That sounds like you were doing exactly what you should do. I guess that then takes us...so I'm going to let you go and move over to the next part, which is how they went through that process and came up with 10 or 11. How did the department come up with 29?

[Ian Shugart]

Well, I know that there had been discussions during that period between officials in the department, including Department of Justice officials, as to the flexibilities and means of expediting these cases. That kind of thing was built into the assessment of what the caseload could be.

That is not something the department can impose on the tribunal, but there were discussions during this period that were intended to result in disposition of cases as quickly and as properly as possible. The committee should know, as I indicated, that this is the kind of co-operative relationship the department and the tribunal have tried to establish to put this on the right footing going forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Shugart.

We'll now move to Mr. Harvey.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I'd like to thank you all for coming.

I have a few quick questions.

I want get back a bit to what Mr. Christopherson said about these 7,000 cases.

My question to you, Mr. Shugart, is that if you have 7,000 cases and you forecast your savings as a department based upon what you feel your workload is going to be and what you need for a workforce to get you where you want to go, are we recognizing those savings?

You've made significant changes to the department over what your baseline was when you originally forecasted your savings. Compared with what the four original adjudications were, how much of that original $25 million in savings are we actually recognizing?

[Ian Shugart]

In general, as I indicated, the savings were realized, as a point of historical information. Second, in orders of magnitude, those savings going forward remain a reasonable analysis.

In the interim, in order to deal with the problems associated with the transition—the backlog, and so on—the department did reallocate internally and provide some supplementary funding to deal with this backlog, because it clearly was not acceptable and we had to deal with it.

In the first year of that financial profile, we did do some reallocation, which would eat into the savings for that year. The chair will know that departments have that flexibility to move money internally to deal with an issue, but going forward, the planned savings are achievable and continue to be reasonable.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I understand what you're saying about your interim measures.

However, if you go back to what you originally planned for savings, you planned on a baseline of employees and a baseline of infrastructure costs on an ongoing basis. You've moved away from that to a much larger infrastructure cost in terms of employees and equipment and everything to support these employees.

How much has that budget grown since you originally made your recommendations?

[Benoît Long]

The forecasts and the expenditures that are currently being spent by the tribunal are now the tribunal's cost base. They're responsible for that side.

On our front, we're right now working through the transition of whatever services are still remaining for the department to support the tribunal with through the ATSSC. That will progress over the next couple of years in phases. We can support the tribunal and the administrative side of the tribunal in that fashion.

In terms of additional temporary injections of funding and whatnot, I'm not aware that we have a request at this point to do so. At this time we believe the savings that were realized by the department will be sustained in the future. They've been eaten up temporarily because temporary injections in the first and second years were made, mostly to resolve the backlog situation.

[Ian Shugart]

Mr. Chair, could I just undertake to review, and if inadvertently we have given any incorrect information about those numbers, I'd be happy to clarify that with the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

You still have a minute, Mr. Harvey.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

My last point, I guess, is on this 317 days that we've moved to.

For me, not as a politician but just as a person, previous to running for politics, as an employer of people who have had to go this route, I had an employee who spent two and a half years in this process. His problem directly affected his vision, and it didn't affect his vision any less on the first day than it did two and a half years later, so the 317 days, to me, is still....

It's great that we've gone from where we were to here, but realistically I think that's still a very large number and that we need to make a transition to at least 180 days, or half of that, for a wait time.

As government, I think it's very easy for us to recognize.... When we talk in terms of hearings and different departments, and about cases, files, backlogs, and targets, it's a very high-level approach. We don't talk about the fact that when you talk about 317 days or 845 days, we're talking about the direct impact that has on somebody's financial situation, somebody who, nine times out of ten, or for a large percentage of the time, has paid into a system over the last 40 or 50 years of their life, or the 35 years of their working career, and has worked extremely hard. I think we need to do a better job of recognizing this on a case-by-case basis and putting a humane approach back into it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Harvey. That's a great concluding statement as well. I think that's what we all want to accomplish here.

We have a few minutes left.

Mr. Poilievre, please.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Going back to paragraph 6.97 and this finding that it took 800 days to dismiss cases that were simply and obviously not eligible, did that 800 days include the period during which both sides were getting ready for the appeal to be heard, or was it subsequent to both sides being ready for the case to be heard?

[Glenn Wheeler]

Mr. Chair, as I indicated previously, it was when both sides were ready to proceed—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Right.