Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 17th, 2018

[Paul Thoppil]

Yes and no. What I mean by that agreement is that the relationship is ongoing. There's not a defined end state, right? It's much like the relationship between the federal government and the provincial governments. We are a partnership trying to improve overall outcomes for the benefit of society. In the self-government agreements, there are periods of renewal, and that's where we have a take stock exercise in terms of what the accomplishments have been with the monies to date.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

So we don't really know. When Mr. Ferguson, in five years from now, looks at what we've done and where we've gone, will he be, first, able to assess what happened within that agreement? Second, will he say, “Well, do you know what? Parliamentarians don't have to worry about it because it was sort of a transferred responsibility”?

I wonder, Mr. Ferguson, how you perceive this, because I think you articulated that.

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, it would depend on what the legislation or the agreement says. We'd have to go back and look at that. Again, I'm taking it to an extreme. We don't look at what the provinces accomplish from equalization funding, fiscal formula funding or anything like that. That's money that's transferred to the provinces, and the provinces have the responsibility to the people in their provinces to deliver.

Can any of that be set up that way for first nations? I don't know, but that is sort of at one end of the extreme. Then you have the other end of the extreme, which is just straight contribution agreements: You hire somebody. You get a bill. You send it to us. We pay for it. We keep doing that type of thing. It's very much going to be dependent on the relationship that's established.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I think I still have a couple of minutes.

I would be very interested in having a paragraph or two in terms of that particular agreement and what responsibilities there are for reporting of indicators and where we are on that spectrum of responsibility and accountability.

I'm looking at things like this education information system, which, it looks like, we've spent a lot of money on. Would that have been part of, for example, this agreement in terms of the Anishinabek or in British Columbia? Is this a system that is being used across the country for all these communities, regardless of whether they are—

[Shelie Laforest]

In our system we do have questions around those that are self-governing. We do have a question that seems to gather data. I believe so, but I will reconfirm. I know that I have two questions that are specific to self-governing. Definitely for the British Columbia agreement, they will continue to report through the system on the indicators that have been agreed upon in the agreement.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

For the self-governing, our ability to understand if the model is working... To not have that ability to understand the data is probably an issue.

[Shelie Laforest]

Yes.

I believe they report on their student count, the information that allows us to track the number of students and the progression. There are a few other indicators, I believe, where they report to us as well under the self-governing agreement. I can confirm that for the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Those were good questions.

Mr. Massé, for the final question, then I have one coming from the analysts.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to ask other questions.

Mr. Tremblay, how many members does your management team have, approximately?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

We will see what will happen to the department after the current discussions. Two assistant deputy ministers are working on the first nations health file—one for the centre and the other one for the regions.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Roughly, how many members are there?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

There are from four to six assistant deputy ministers, but their final number will depend on the outcome of the department restructuring. The rest are directors general.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I assume that you will share what we discussed today with your management team?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

Yes.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Great. I am saying this to you because it is important. I would perhaps go even further by suggesting that you share this report with all of your employees, if you haven't done so already.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

Yes.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I am sure that many of your employees have already seen the report, but I would like to ensure that all your employees are aware of it. We are clearly taking this report and its findings seriously. I know that you are also taking them seriously, as is your management team. However, it may be a good idea to make all of your employees aware of particularly important and difficult realities and findings.

If I may insist, I think that would be useful, as once we see each other again in a few months to follow up on this report, you may benefit from better support because all of your employees will be behind your process.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I am duly noting your recommendation and will follow up on it. Perhaps I should send a message to all of my employees with a copy of the report, and remind them of the importance we give to data in general. I know that they are aware of it, but it may be a good idea to remind them.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

We all have our different questions, and then typically at the end of a meeting our analysts, our researchers, will hand me a question to ask. They may want some information in regard to us building a report on the study we've done.

You spoke to Mr. Christopherson's question when he talked about the education gap and not reporting it, and I think Ms. Yip also, on the student attendance.

However, the question I've been given is that the Auditor General found that the department did not report results for most of the performance measures. In particular, the strategy for 2014 contained 23 specific measures, but the OAG found that the department never reported on 17 of them. For example, as Ms. Yip brought up, it did not report on student attendance and first nation language instruction.

There were 17 of the 23 that were not reported on. Why is that?

I think he answered “I don't know” to Mr. Christopherson on the education gap. What about some of the others of the 17?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I would suspect that.... We can check on our side, but if the data are not good quality and we don't have all of them, we probably don't report them. That's possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Lack of data: There's your answer.

Good. Thank you very much.

I'm going to ask the committee to stay, please. Mr. Christopherson has requested about five or 10 minutes of committee business.

I want to thank our guests for attending today. The moose hide has been handed out in our lobbies. I see many different ones. Maybe they're not wearing them today, but they are all instructed to be wearing them tomorrow. They are available.

Thank you, Mr. Tremblay, for bringing them.

To all of you, thank you.

I typically end by saying that if you leave here and feel that you could have answered a certain question a little differently, or you find other information as to one of the questions that was asked, please feel free to follow up with our analysts or our clerk. We'll make sure that those answers get into our study and our report.

Thank you for your attendance.

We'll suspend for one or two minutes and allow the witnesses the opportunity to make their exit, and then we'll go in camera after that.

[Proceedings continue in camera]