Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 29th, 2018

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Flack, how much money has been spent on these two programs in the last financial year?

[Graham Flack]

The program split is.... Do you mean for the previous financial year, or the year to date?

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

When did this program start?

[Graham Flack]

There were different iterations of this program. In the most recent financial year.... I think the program goes back to 2010-11 for the first iteration. Since that period, the total expenditures would have been $2.4 billion on this program and $300 million on the skills and partnership fund. Those are the cumulative totals—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Sorry; you said $2.4 billion?

[Graham Flack]

That is since 2010-11, if I take all of those years together. Right now, before we move into this new funding arrangement, it's just around $300 million for the main program.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Flack, my riding is Nepean. I haven't had any infrastructure funding there. In fact, there's no federal government funding money there. We have one railway crossing that is required where an accident occurred and six people died. The city can't do it because it's $100 million. For us, every single million is a very important thing.

Here we have spent $2.4 billion plus about $300 million and we don't know if that has been used effectively or if any good has come out of that. Don't you think that it is sort of unacceptable and uncomfortable to hear that number?

[Graham Flack]

As the Auditor General indicated, instead of tracking the meaningful and sustainable employment with the longer-term measures, for the reasons that I said and the challenges around doing that, the department chose to focus on short-term measures. There were measures that the department was able to assess based on the performance of the program.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

I'm sorry to cut you off. In the measures—

[Graham Flack]

For example, $1,600 incremental income was achieved by those individuals in the program—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Sorry; I apologize for cutting you off.

You have some measures. Let's say that you said that with the new framework, you want to measure the objectives to reduce the skills gap between indigenous and non-indigenous people by 50%, and the employment gap by 25%. That's the new target you have.

[Graham Flack]

That will be the meta-target, but then you have to have specific—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

For the $2.4 billion we have spent so far, how much has it come down?

[Graham Flack]

If we look at the unemployment figures from 2010, you would see that indigenous unemployment in the country has been reduced, but we cannot correlate that with program spending. We would not want to attempt to tell you that we can definitively say it's this program spending that has caused those improvements. That's part of what we're trying to do, going forward.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

For all the new and old programs combined, how much are we planning to spend this financial year?

[Graham Flack]

Rachel, what is the split this year?

[Rachel Wernick]

It's $342 million in 2018-19 for ASETS.

[Graham Flack]

Then $99 million has been added incrementally in the budget that will begin in the next fiscal year.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

The point is that we have been spending $342 million. That's for all the related programs, right?

[Rachel Wernick]

Right.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Okay, we are spending $342 million based on the previous commitments, and we still don't know how effective it is, and now we are putting another $100 million more onto this. Shouldn't we just hold on to that until we see how to set up something to measure it better before spending it?

[Graham Flack]

The new framework will be in place in time for the new spending to come online. We are not going to start spending the new money until we have the framework in place. That framework will be in place April 1.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

You also said that we need quality, highly localized labour market information. I think Mr. Kelly did mention that we had been spending money, $2.4 billion, all these years. Didn't we get that information? Did we spend any money getting this quality labour market information so far?

[Graham Flack]

Sure. There was information that.... You think of the program as creating the equivalent of an employment office on the reserve. They had market intelligence about what employers were asking for. The Canada Job Bank offered a source of data that allowed us to provide that information, so yes, absolutely, there were sources of information. For the second program, as an example, when they had a big project in the Lower Churchill, they indicated the labour they anticipated they would need, and we had information that could be used to make the judgments about where to go.

What I'm saying is that the type of data the Auditor General said we would all like to have—timely, comprehensive, correct data at a micro-market level at the standards we would be used to if we were looking at, for example, Nova Scotia—has not been statistically possible. I don't want to say there has been no data, because there has been, but there hasn't been the type of comprehensive data we would all like to have, for the reasons I talked about. It is not present in any community, given the statistical limitations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Flack.

We can come back, Mr. Arya, but your time is up.

Mr. Christopherson is next, please.