Public Accounts Committee on May 9th, 2019

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Am I correct in understanding your report, that there are concerns about all three of these and whether they are actually being done correctly?

[Sylvain Ricard]

What Mr. Le Goff is referring to is in the auditor's report. We refer to the fact... we noted there was not enough audit work done by CBSA. We give some illustrations. I'll just use one. They've done some audit work where the declared value of the package was $800,000. When they opened the package—it was a sample—the value was not $800,000. It was $13.5 million. If you are just not doing enough work, you will not catch the amount of tax that is not being paid. If you don't know and don't do enough for the GST, the same issue, driven by the value of the package, applies to the provinces as well.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Well, in that one example, depending on the province—that one example that you just mentioned would be in Ontario—that would be almost $1.7 million in uncollected taxes on that transaction alone. In fact, that would be 1% of the total identified shortcoming of $160-some-odd million in one transaction. How confident are we that $169 million in lost revenue is an accurate figure, that it's not in fact substantially higher than that?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Recognizing that I'm kind of repeating myself, that's the message we conveyed to the agency.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

We're here to amplify messages, so go ahead.

[Sylvain Ricard]

They need to do more audit work to have assurance that the values declared for the packages are accurate, and accordingly, that the taxes are aligned to the real value of the packages. They need to do more audit work to get that assurance themselves.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

We'll now move to Mr. Christopherson, please, for seven minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I thank our Auditor General and his staff for being here again.

The thing that jarred me the most going through these reports, and it's just personal experience, was your overall message on the RCMP where you state on page 2, “Overall, we found that not all RCMP officers had access to the equipment they needed to respond to an active shooter situation.”

It struck me for three different reasons. One is just as a citizen. Particularly when we link this to Mr. Arya's point, normally the issue in these cases is that the money and the equipment are not there, and that's the source of the problem. In this case, we were well past that. The funding had been issued, the equipment had been purchased, and it was now just a matter of distribution and making sure it was available to the right people at the right time. That is solely management. As a citizen, it just jars me that a world-class national police service like the RCMP, given the funds and the equipment they need from Parliament, failed to manage them in a way that kept our officers and public as safe as they could be.

Then it hit me because of my own experience as a former solicitor general in Ontario responsible for some of these things and having a little better understanding of how policing works than the average person. It jarred me.

Last, as with other colleagues, some of whom were here, I've been in an active shooter situation where I was one of the targets right here in Centre Block. For those three life experience reasons, when I read that, it really jarred me.

I know we're going to call them in, and I know we're going to hold them to account on this one, and they're pretty good at keeping an eye on these things. I suspect, and I would hope, that they're going to have ironclad answers and procedures, more than what we find in here. You can tell that they spent time wording some of this stuff. I've been there; I get it, but we need to hear satisfactory answers that commit to safety.

The last thing I want to say on this is that it's important that the Canada Labour Code is referenced here, because part of it references the right for RCMP officers to have as safe a workplace as they can, notwithstanding that they're in one of the most dangerous workplaces you can be in.

It was under the Occupational Health and Safety Act in Ontario and the fact that the responsibility for police officers under that act was not being met, that I, as the solicitor general, authorized police in Ontario, OPP and municipal, to move from a revolver to a semi-automatic. It was all based on the health and safety of the officers.

I've got to tell you, this one really jumped out at me. I don't really have a question per se, but I'll give you the opportunity, Auditor General, to either agree with my remarks or, if you think I've been over the top, I'm willing to hear that. I'd like your thoughts on both your findings and my comments about your findings.

[Sylvain Ricard]

Our conclusion was that officers don't always have the equipment and the training they need to protect themselves and protect the public. We're talking about hard body armour and we're talking about carbines.

We refer in the report to having to do better on managing a project. We do mention in the report that they've added more carbines, but you need to manage that. You need to prepare for training and recertification because when they're not trained or recertified, they can't have access to the carbines. You also need to maintain those carbines, and we've noted that 50% of the carbines were not maintained according to their own standards. We made a number of recommendations so that they improve those issues.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very good. Thank you. We'll be following that one up, big time.

I'd like to move now, because we're running out of runway in terms of Parliament, and I'm not sure how many hearings we're going to get in before Parliament not only rises but very soon dissolves.

I'd like to raise one issue that may not get some further attention beyond this, and it is your report on the “Oversight of Government of Canada Advertising”. It's not as serious as the issue we just talked about, but looking at the overall political situation, this is always a rub.

I've been around long enough in elected office to remember when this was just an idea thrown out a few decades ago, and now we've got to the point where we've got actual policies and legislation that speaks to government not using taxpayers' money to advance its partisan interests.

Your message on page 3, paragraph 4.15 is:

Overall, in our view, the Government of Canada’s oversight of advertising was not sufficiently robust to ensure that the Government of Canada was meeting its commitment that public funds were not...spent on partisan advertising.

Could you just tease that one out for us a little more, please, Auditor General, in terms of your findings?

[Sylvain Ricard]

There were two perspectives here. One is that there is a review being done on campaigns. The decision to go with the independent external reviewer is anchored in a dollar threshold—a $500,000 campaign goes to an external review.

We are of the view, especially in these days with technology and other means of delivering campaigns in a cheaper way, that other limits such as topics of the campaign and the size of the audience, the reach, should be considered.

After a few years of having the mechanism in place, we made the recommendation that it may be time to reflect on adjusting that criterion.

The second perspective is the review being done internally or externally. There was not enough documentation for us to be able to assess the rigour with which the assessment was done. Internally or externally, there was basically no file for us to review.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I am assuming there should have been. That material should have been there.

[Sylvain Ricard]

No, the only way you can manage a function like that is to adopt a new file, so you can have somebody reviewing the files, supervising the work, planning the work and demonstrating that it's being done properly.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very good. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Arseneault, go ahead please, for seven minutes.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

There are lots of reports and questions. We won't have time to cover all of them today, but I understand that we'll have the opportunity to see and question the authors of these reports at a later date.

My first question is about call centres and is for you, Mr. Ricard, or maybe for you, Mr. Goulet. I believe that one of you is responsible for this report.

This report is dated 16 January 2019, so at the end of the audit period, but it wasn't submitted until this month, so until May. The planning of the call centre modernization project started 5 years ago, in 2013-2014. Did I understand correctly?

[Sylvain Ricard]

That is correct. Shared Services Canada launched a call centre modernization project 5 years ago, but has realized since that it would be more complicated and costly than originally planned. To this day, the organization has modernized 8 call centres, but there are still 213 for which nothing has been planned yet, because the organization needs to set out its plans.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

I don't have much time, so I will be short.

There's a difference between starting to plan modernization and starting to modernize right away. If I understood correctly, Shared Services Canada has spent 5 years planning the modernization of these 221 call centres, but has only modernized 8 of them so far, and has no plan for the others. Is that correct?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Indeed, there is no plan. The organization will have to set out a plan going forward.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

What is the main reason for this shortcoming? Is it a lack of funding or human resources? What reason were you given?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Shared Services Canada underestimated the efforts required, the project's technological complexity, and the staff's necessary level of expertise to come to modernize all 221 call centres. The organization managed to do 8 in the last 5 years, but it will have to plan for the rest.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Three departments were audited: Veterans Affairs Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada, and Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada.

We hear a lot about immigration and citizenship in the media.

Is the Department of Employment and Social Development responsible for employment insurance?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Yes.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

I will tell you about something I personally experienced as an MP.

I held a public meeting with a number of citizens in the most rural area in my riding — which is mostly rural —, in a small municipality an hour and fifteen minutes east and west of the two main centres, separated by forests. In that area, the unemployment rate is quite high, so people are used to dealing with employment insurance. Fortunately, the unemployment period is relatively short during the year since the forest industry keeps that region dynamic from an economic standpoint, except for short periods during which roads freeze and thaw, and the movement of wood must be interrupted. So, the unemployment period is very short, but the unemployment rate is quite high.

The goal of the public meeting was to find out how the employment insurance service was working in the region, if the call centre was functional, and if the service and answers given by the employment insurance personnel were adequate. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all people in attendance were satisfied. The statistics for this region show that 95 % of employment insurance requests were sorted out online. Very few people used the call centres, but when they did, they received good service. I was pleasantly surprised.

What do you think about that? Is that success due to the seasonal — therefore, predictable — nature of unemployment there?

[Sylvain Ricard]

There are all kinds of scenarios. However, as stated in the report, 25 % of Canadians want to deal with the government by phone. The report also shows that, in the case of the Employment Insurance program, 52 % of callers did not manage to speak to an agent.