Public Accounts Committee on May 14th, 2019

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

That is always an issue in government and it is somewhat generalized.

Concerning data management more specifically, you pointed out that it is a problem in all departments, or nearly all of them. Since we have been sitting on this committee, starting in 2015, that is something we have come to understand.

Do you think there has been any improvement in that area over the past three years? Have you really noted a major difference?

[Sylvain Ricard]

It is an issue that seems to persist. The problem once again came up in the reports we produced recently. Essentially, those types of problems came up in at least four of the five files. Based on our definition of data quality, we can even say that there were issues in all five files.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Can you explain that to us?

[Sylvain Ricard]

When we look at the audits that have been carried out and presented, and, ultimately, if we look at our own office, we see that there is a significant challenge in terms of computer systems.

In our case—and we talk about this in our documents—we have funding challenges, which have resulted in under-investment in our computer systems over the years. For example, our human resources system is still on a DOS platform, if I'm not mistaken.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Oh my gosh.

[Sylvain Ricard]

So this is an environment where we use the mouse, function keys, and so on. It was high time for us to look into that. It is causing issues in terms of business continuity, as the system can stop working at any time.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Mendès.

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

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to pick up on the direction we were going in anyway.

In your opening statement, you spoke of requesting more money and not receiving it, and thus, having to make operational decisions based on the money that these estimates contain. Certainly, since we can't increase your estimates, that's a political question for the government and not a question for us today.

You spoke of deferred support and deferring support services. Could you elaborate on what you are deferring? What has already been deferred and what potential consequences you see from deferring the support services you mentioned?

[Sylvain Ricard]

A good part of that is about the IT systems, the IT support functions, which include or lead to issues of IT security. A few years ago we went through an assessment internally to identify what was needed on all of the IT fronts for our business needs. Basically, what we're down to is that, to remain a modern and relevant audit organization, we need to have the means to do our work in an efficient way, in a relevant way. With artificial intelligence and all of those new ways of doing business in various organizations, and the new systems, if we don't remain current, we don't have access to the tools to audit the systems that we're auditing. That's a significant challenge we're facing.

When we discuss with the private sector, for example, it's clear that we are falling behind. We have to deal with that. Otherwise, there will come a point when we'll face a wall. We will be auditing entities and we won't have the tools to do it.

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

You mentioned your human resources system. Is that...?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Human resources is truly an internal system. That's the one I was referring to as running on DOS.

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

Right, but is that one funded now and will be completed, or is that part of what you're still deferring?

[Sylvain Ricard]

That one, we prioritized because it was getting to a point where there was a danger of its failing on us. We made it priority number one and everything else was pushed to the side, including some priorities on the audit operation side, in the sense of having the IT audit tools to provide to our auditors.

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

Okay, those were the two main support services, the audit software or the audit IT platform, or—

[Sylvain Ricard]

We have had issues in staffing various functions in our services, contracting. We've now been getting to a better place over the last little while, but we were at a point where audit operations had to wait for the contracts to be in place to be able to do the work. For IT security, to support IT security you need people and software to provide you the information and monitor various elements of IT security. We're still working on that.

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

Are there any risks, other than your inability to conduct as many audits as you would prefer, with the budget restraints you have?

[Sylvain Ricard]

The IT infrastructure is one place. IT staffing and expertise is another place. Over the last few years—the former auditor general referred to that here a few times in the past—there have been the pressures it put on the staff of having to stretch everything all the time. The way I put it to colleagues is that the only reason we will go through this year in a reasonable way is that some new mandates that were given to us are not picking up or starting as fast as they could have.

When we're talking about the pipeline audit, the Infrastructure Bank, those new mandates that we got, if they would have all gone faster at the same time, we would have had to make even more difficult decisions this year. We're managing for another year to minimize the impact, but the longer we go, the more problems are going to come.

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

You are the auditor for the Infrastructure Bank and that is a new audit function that you must perform.

[Sylvain Ricard]

Yes, and there are a number of them that we were asked to audit over the last few years—I'll say four or five of them—but there was no increase related to that except when we asked, as I was referring to earlier—

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

Right.

[Sylvain Ricard]

We asked for $21 million and we got $8 million.

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

The $21 million in your estimate was to include all the new functions, all the new things you have been asked to do, and to catch up on the operational or support services side.

[Sylvain Ricard]

I'll ask Mr. Hayes to add to this.

The former auditor general had prepared a full business case describing all of it, and maybe Mr. Hayes can speak to some specifics.

[Andrew Hayes, Deputy Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General]

Yes. Thank you.

At the time that the Auditor General presented his budget business case to the Minister of Finance in 2017, some of the mandates that Mr. Ricard was talking about were contemplated, such as the Canada Infrastructure Bank.

The work on the pipeline, Trans Mountain Corporation, wasn't contemplated at that point in time and we didn't receive additional funding for that.

Likewise, a significant change in legislation such as the Federal Sustainable Development Act, which enhanced the scope of the commissioner of the environment's responsibility to 96 entities from 26, did not come with an increase in funding. She has a responsibility that's a lot broader than she had before.

Without additional funding, new mandates create a challenge for us.