Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Ferguson and your team, for the work you have done and for being here today.
I would like to follow up on the excellent questions of my colleague, Madam Shanahan, with regard to the data. It is not that often that you step back from your micro-focus in your report to talk about things of this nature, and when you do, we need to pay particular attention.
I recall our briefing the other day. To paraphrase you—and correct me if I am wrong—we have spent two or three decades now putting together very sophisticated systems and programs that work. They are state of the art and they are the gold standard in the world, but without the proper data going in, in a timely, efficient, and complete manner, and then being analyzed in the right way, quite frankly, all the efforts of that great, sophisticated system fail us. I very much appreciate your raising this issue.
Also, I think it is very important that you have taken the time to show Canadians, through your report and your public comments today, how this affects individuals. Otherwise, this issue could get lost. It is not very sexy. You are never going to get a headline that has data in it, as a rule, and yet we know that this is the key piece of it. If this doesn't work, the rest of it doesn't work at all.
Again, in outlining the impact on the citizenship program that you've analyzed, your words today were, “...such failings are limiting the effectiveness of efforts to combat citizenship fraud risks.” There is nothing more timely or important than security.
You went on to say:
In National Defence, a lack of current data on human resources is keeping the Canadian Army from knowing whether Reserve soldiers are trained and ready to deploy, yet the Army relies on these soldiers to carry out its international missions.
We have spent some time on that, and I hope I can return to it, if I have time.
Again, you said:
In the case of Veterans Affairs Canada, the Department is not using the data it collects to better understand how its clients use drug benefits.
Here is the thing that matters:
This missed opportunity is not in the best interest of veterans.
How many more alarm bells do we need at the political level to understand that this is important?
I also want to add—and I do have a question in all of this—that ultimately our goal here at the public accounts committee is really not “gotcha”, although some looking in might think so, in terms of how we approach this; at the end of the day, our real objective is to change behaviour.
Some will find this surprising, but nothing makes me happier than a report that says, “You know what? Most things in this department are going tickety-boo.” I mean, it denies me a chance to get up and rail away as an opposition member, but as a parliamentarian.... It's like hearing you say that the annual books are clean—you use that term. That warms my heart. I don't care who is in government at the time. I like that. Our purpose is to change behaviour so that deputies and others who are responsible don't end up here watching what happens to some senior bureaucrats who aren't following things the way they should.
All of that—I am actually going somewhere—is to ask, what can we do? I appreciate that you have raised this, sir. We are now doing what we can in this public arena, and that is part of the partnership between the work you do and the work of this committee, but on an ongoing basis, what can we put in place to allow us to monitor and measure, and to satisfy ourselves that we are getting that change in behaviour—that the deputies and the others who are responsible understand that this is a big deal and that from here on, one of the things we are going to be focusing on is this issue?
Again, I have learned in my time here that if we don't have the ability to measure something, we can't really effectively determine whether we are making any headway.
Do you have any suggestions for us, here at the political level, about anything we can do that would assist you in ensuring that this important component in the work of government is done properly? Do you have any thoughts at all, sir, on what we can do to help in that regard?