Public Accounts Committee on May 31st, 2018

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Can I see it, then, please?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll hear from Mr. Angus on that.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I'm very interested in working with my colleagues on the motion. I think it should be done right, but we do have the Auditor General here, and we're televised. I would prefer to at least get a chance to ask some questions while they work on the motion, and then we can finish this off before we leave at 5:30.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Ms. Mendès, while you work on a motion, we do have a motion on the table here.

Is there a process whereby we can set the motion aside and continue on—

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

We can defer it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Okay.

Is it all right with the mover if we defer it until a time where we get—

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Then I can make an amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

—the amendment that's going to show the full scope of the audit? That way we can carry on with other questions to our Auditor General.

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Yes, Mr. Chair, as long as it's done today, I think it's part of our reaction.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Are we good to defer it to the last 10 minutes of the—

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

We can defer it to the last five minutes, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Okay, we'll do that.

Thank you to the mover, and to Ms. Mendès on the amendment.

Mr. Angus, welcome here. Thanks for your time.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ferguson.

I want to mention at the outset the enormous respect I have for the work that you and your predecessor did on shining a light into the black hole that was indigenous affairs and is now Indigenous Services.

This day is the eighth anniversary of the death of Shannen Koostachin, who was the youth leader who had never seen a real school, living in a country like Canada. She fought for education. I find it appalling that after every report your department has come out with we're still talking about the “incomprehensible failure”. If a department refuses to put the interests of children first, there's nothing “incomprehensible” about the failure. This is a predictable outcome. What's “incomprehensible” is how governments and departments year in, year out could have such a disregard for children, the children of Canada.

I want to start off looking at page 13, where you talk about the importance of literacy. In 2013-14, Indigenous affairs, for the first time that I ever remember, did a report on the “Success” program, in which they listed literacy and numeracy rates. In the Ontario region, the literacy rate for boys was 21%, and the numeracy rates were 18% for boys and 20% for girls. For the Waterloo public board, the literacy rates are 85%, and yet the department at that time announced in the same report that they were discontinuing keeping track because they thought the money could be spent better elsewhere.

I ask you, with your concerns about literacy, what better thing could a department that looks after children's education spend money on than finding out whether or not children can read?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Ferguson.

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, I think the audit certainly did point out the fact that there has not been improvement in the education outcomes of first nations on-reserve students, and we've been doing audits in this area for almost 20 years. The thing I would want to add to what you said is that literacy is one of the most important things. It's the literacy outcomes that need to happen. The money is the enabler, but they need to make sure the money is spent in a way that's going to get outcomes. I referred to the fact that over four years the government spent $42 million on a preparatory program to help prepare first nations on-reserve people to go on and take post-secondary education, but only 8% of them completed that preparatory program, let alone how many of those 8% actually went on.

It can't be about just the amount of money spent. There also needs to be a connection that says that the money is going to the right places and it is achieving the outcomes it's supposed to achieve.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

One of the fundamental principles of education is that you have comparable data. Our public system produces some of the highest-quality education in the world, and yet indigenous affairs has no comparisons with children in a provincial system, no idea about the management of programs, no attempt to actually identify the education gaps that exist. On page 17, you say they misrepresented the graduation rates, which they claimed were 46%, when the real number was 24%. I would put it to you, from the communities I've been in, where I've seen young people dropping out in grades 5 and 6 because they're so hopelessly behind, that these numbers might be even higher. How can we allow a system to run when they don't even bother to find the comparison with other students who are in the same provincially mandated curriculum?

[Michael Ferguson]

The premise of this whole audit was that governments often talk about the need to close the socio-economic gap that exists between on-reserve first nations people in particular, and other Canadians. The first thing we identified was that they aren't measuring what that socio-economic gap is. The information they do have is based on census information. They haven't updated it for the 2016 census, so the most recent numbers they have on what they call their community well-being index comes from 2011. They need to have a much better way of identifying what is a socio-economic gap, how they measure it, and how they know what's happening to it.

When we looked at the specifics of education—as I said earlier, something that we looked at almost 20 years ago—we saw that there has not been any improvement in the gap in education outcomes between the rest of Canadians and first nations on-reserve students.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you for that.

What concerns me is that you identify in your report that, back in 2000, indigenous affairs committed that they would start to get comparable numbers, in 2004, I believe. The Auditor General asked for that in maybe 2011. They followed up in 2016. The Parliamentary Budget Officer asked where those comparable numbers were, and this department hadn't bothered to get the numbers. To me, this is not a failure. This is systemic negligence. If this was in the provincial system, heads would roll, but with indigenous affairs, it's just another day at the office.

How can we be looking at a report today where they haven't bothered to gather information they were told to get 18 years ago? For a child who was in grade 8 then, their kids are in the same broken system. I've got kids who are dropping out. We're losing generation after generation of young people because of this negligence. How do you hold them to account to say, if you are not going to bother to even track the numbers you were ordered to by the Auditor General, you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near programs for children?

[Michael Ferguson]

Mr. Chair, the only thing I can say is, in the course of these audits, we identify these issues. The departments will come back and say that they are going to do something. They will always agree with our recommendations. They say they're going to implement something, but too often, when we go back and do another follow-up audit, we find that they haven't done it.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

It's 18 years of kids' lives that they didn't bother to track.

[Michael Ferguson]

There's no way I can explain that. The department is going to have to explain that.

We are as disappointed as anybody when we see that issues that we raised many years ago aren't followed up on. It's not just issues that we raise, but issues that come out of other reports, as I mentioned in those other types of areas. There are many different ways that government programs are evaluated, and recommendations are made to make improvements. It's extremely discouraging for us to come back and find that departments have committed to do something, and then we find out they haven't done it.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Angus. Good questions.

We'll now move to Mr. Arya, who is the last one in the seven-minute rounds.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the Auditor General and his team for the excellent report they have done on various departments.

I would like to ask the Auditor General about Phoenix. All project management problems related to Phoenix can be traced, in my opinion, to one single decision: that is in your paragraph 1.32. You mentioned that in the spring of 2012, after the planning phase of Phoenix, IBM told Public Services and Procurement Canada that Phoenix would cost $274 million to build and implement. You also mentioned that the Treasury Board had approved only $155 million in 2009. The approved amount was approximately only 55% of the expected cost to build and implement Phoenix. You also mentioned that Public Services and Procurement Canada did not consider asking the Treasury Board for more money to build and implement Phoenix.

If you ask me, all the complex problems that are associated with this big, complex project are due to this one single thing.

I would like to focus on that and ask: Who are the people who made the decision not to ask Treasury Board for the full required amount?

[Michael Ferguson]

There's no way for us to know that. All we know is that the department did not go back to Treasury Board. In our opinion, they should have gone back to Treasury Board, either to ask for more money or to tell Treasury Board they'd had to cut back on the functionality of the system, and that consequently the system would not be able to produce the $70-million-a-year savings they had originally said it would. They had a responsibility to go back, one way or the other.