Thank you, Chair.
Thanks to all of you for your attendance today.
We have a report that is not necessarily good, but it's not horrible.
On page 2 at paragraph 2.10, we see the focus of the audit: “This audit focused on whether selected federal organizations disposed of surplus goods and equipment at the appropriate time in a manner that maximized benefits.” The conclusion is in paragraph 2.62 on page 13: “We concluded that the selected federal organizations did not always dispose of surplus goods and equipment in a manner that maximized benefits.”
It's a fail, but given what we've seen recently, I have to say that it's not the end of the world.
As for what really stands out, Mr. Hamilton, you should hope this meeting goes on forever, because the Canada Revenue Agency is looking great through this whole thing. I want to raise that because I think it's really important. Most deputies at one time or another have had a difficult time here at this committee. You in particular recently went through the meat-grinder on issues that still get referred to in terms of major problems at the Canada Revenue Agency, which I hope you're working diligently to rectify.
I think it's always fair and important for this committee to also go out of its way to give credit when an agency and a department has done well and has done things right. You're the gold star pupil in this one, Mr. Hamilton. I can't emphasize enough how positive this is for your organization. I would strongly recommend, whether it was you or other key people who made this happen, to tell yourself to keep going down that road and that you go out of your way to find out why that worked. What was the incentive that made it work?
I find it interesting and passing strange that the agency that did the best was the agency that didn't have help from Treasury Board. Everybody that had help from Treasury Board didn't do very well here. CRA, which did it on their own, did a great job. I wanted to point this out because it stood out. Even in the recommendations, it jumped out at me, and normally that stuff is meant to say what it's supposed to say. However, I thought it was very intriguing.
The response of the Canada Revenue Agency—and they were the only ones that I saw that took a government-wide perspective—was a simple sentence, but I thought it said a lot. I'm quoting the Canada Revenue Agency responding to the Auditor General's report: “However, a broader, integrated horizontal approach across government would facilitate an efficient, fair, and transparent donation process for both the donor departments and agencies and the receiving organizations.”
Again, that tells me that they've thought this through. They've done a great job within their own organization. When the AG asked what could be done better, they were the ones who cast their eyes up a little further and looked across the horizon and said,“You know, if we started to do some of these things across the whole government, we could do a lot better.”
Again, I was one of those that came down on CRA on some of those reports, and I think rightly so, but I also want to rightly give all kinds of praise and credit to you, Mr. Hamilton, and to the CRA on this file. You've done an exceptional job. Believe it or not, you're now the standard that everybody else has to get to, so kudos to you.
I'm not going have a lot of time left, but I wanted to say two things.
One, the big disappointment in here for me was data. At paragraph 2.63, the Auditor General says in conclusion, “We were unable to conclude on whether the selected federal organizations disposed of surplus goods and equipment at the appropriate time because organizations did not maintain sufficient documentation.”
Really? After all these years of our saying that this is a priority and the Auditor General saying that this is a priority, we now find that when the Auditor General goes in, they can't even do the audit because they don't even have sufficient numbers to work with. Like, come on. I don't know when the deputies and these departments are going to start getting with it on data. It's not that difficult, yet it's something that keeps falling and falling. I for one am going to continue to press on this issue, and I'm sure our colleagues will too. We committed that this was a priority for this committee in this Parliament, and so far, across the board, most entities are failing horribly.
It's time to get your act together. That's the big rant on this one. That just jumped right out at me.
If I have the time, Madame Lemay, I also want to note that you received some credit. The AG said that GCSurplus did a good job, and they did, and you were right to point that out. Kudos to them.
The question I have is on the CRA. What it did best was finding the donations, but when I look at the rules around GCSurplus, I see that they're based on commission and profit. You mentioned that already. Is there something there we need to change so that the entity gets a financial credit?
Since they're already set up to receive commissions when they sell, is there some way you or the AG can think of that we could credit them with dollar value to create the incentive, so that GCSurplus would want, where it can, to make transfers?
Right now it appears to me that if they go with a transfer, they run the risk of losing a potential sale. They need that money because they're profit-oriented.
That would be my one question in terms of how we could improve things going forward.