Thank you, Chair.
I'm glad you had an opportunity to respond. It's not meant to be a kangaroo court; it's meant to be an opportunity to exchange ideas and thoughts.
Since we're doing a little nitpicking back and forth, I would just say, in terms of that court decision, that no Auditor General has ever asked for cabinet confidences. They have no interest in what staff recommend to cabinet. It's not their business. It's not what they do. They don't care. The problem has been that information the Auditor General is entitled to, such as whether the staff have done the proper work to make sure the minister was informed to make the right kind of advice to cabinet, has been often swept under cabinet confidence by different governments that didn't want to release the information, so we get into these tug-of-wars. In terms of the raw information that Auditors General want, they are entitled to that, and they don't want the political stuff; they do everything they can to stay away from it.
Second, on chapter zero, it sounds as though I'm wrong. I stand corrected and I apologize. It also proves that Michael is no politician.
Let me also now move to a couple of comments to reaffirm what I've said earlier and my conclusion in terms of where I think we're going or not going. This is from the report:
As I said earlier, the bottom line is that the culture has to change. I don’t have a set of instructions to fix a broken government culture. But I know that the first step has to be to describe the current culture, which I have attempted to do, although I may not have captured everything. The second step is to admit that the culture problem is real and that it urgently needs to be fixed. How to fix it will be up to the government and the public service. The silver lining is that while there is a culture problem, the recent public service survey shows that the average public servant wants the culture to change, and wants to work in a culture that focuses on results for people.
Next, the reason I'm so disappointed in the direction that this discussion is taking today is that we have a perfect opportunity to do this in a climate where there is no weaponization or politicization of this document. The Auditor General has said that this has been going on for decades, that it is not the result of the Harper government such that we're going to go after them and demonize them some more, and it's not the result of the current government such that we're going to do everything we can to take down the current Prime Minister and replace him in the next election. The Auditor General is saying this has been going on for decades, and if we want to place blame, there's blame to go around for everybody. Coming from one of the parties that's never been in power, I tell you I'm not interested in blame. We do that in the House of Commons during question period and a whole lot of other places, but not here, colleagues.
I want to quote another couple of lines from the Auditor General's report, since again the Clerk has a different view from the Auditor General's.
The Auditor General says, “I am not assigning political blame, but my view is that both governments had opportunities to prevent the incomprehensible failure that Phoenix became.”
Let me just say what a great opportunity this is for us. Nobody's saying this is about partisan politics. It's about the culture. What a great opportunity. Nobody needs to feel defensive, colleagues.
He goes on to say, “A standard lessons-learned exercise won’t prevent future incomprehensible failures. Phoenix is a defining moment—a wake-up call—that goes well beyond lessons learned. It needs to lead to a deeper understanding and correction of the pervasive cultural problems at play.”
He continues: “What follows is my description of the culture in the federal government—a culture that has evolved with each passing decade. I want to be clear that the current government did not create this culture—it inherited it—but it now has an opportunity to shape it for the better.”
The last thing I want to say, Chair—a little indulgence, 30 seconds—is that we need mainstream and social media to jump on this and make it the issue that it is. I know the Phoenix thing gets all the headlines. It's nice and easy and it's the politics and it's sexy, and I get all of that, but this is what's underlying, what's causing Phoenix. If we don't see this as a focal point, it's going to go on and on, and basically this will get swept under the rug. That's where we are right now. Either this becomes an issue that we care about.... I think we need some outside pressure here from somebody in the media, from those who have access, who will focus on this and say, “Hey, this is a big deal. Please take this unique opportunity, where there's no political blame, to fix it.”
We're the ones who should be providing the leadership to do that.
Chair, thank you for your indulgence.
