However, it's unfortunate. I would have preferred to end on a positive note. That's not possible with this one.
I agree with my colleague in terms of the amount of time available. It's really hard to know where to focus in.
Look, the late Michael Ferguson's mantra was, “Do service well.” This is the opposite. This is doing service lousy. To me, this report highlights the importance of audit reports and having these things come forward. That's why it's such a disgrace that the current government is not providing the Auditor General's office with the money it needs to follow the audit plan it has for next year, including a study on cybersecurity.
As you know, Chair, I will be using every opportunity to underscore that insulting, disgusting decision by the government, and it's nothing less than that. That's what autocrats do. They hide. That's what this government is doing. I can only hope that before this Parliament rises we can get them to change their minds.
I want to give a compliment to the deputy of Veterans Affairs. I want to say, sir, that one of the things I enjoyed when I was a solicitor general was to work with police in a very similar culture, and that is that things tend to be straight up front. There's not a lot of BS. There's not a lot of fog. There's not a lot of uncertainty—it's this, this or this, or it isn't.
I really liked that you came in and said.... There were a couple of compliments in here, but you were good enough to mention this, and I'm asking other deputies to pay attention, because there is something to be learned here. In your presentation you said:
When the department stopped offering a teletypewriter service for the hearing disabled, there was no indication from our records as to the rationale for this cut in service, nor whether there was consultation with veterans. This is not appropriate service.
That's what I like to hear from a deputy minister. Roll in here, and when something has failed, say so. It goes a long way.
Then he goes on to say, “As such, we are reversing this decision”. I'd like the government to get into the habit of that and reverse their decision in terms of funding the Auditor General.
That's the way the deputies should be coming in here, and this is what has frustrated me. For Shared Services, I have to tell you, the stuff we hear in terms of the justification for nonsense is just mind-boggling.
Again, I would give one example from Immigration and Refugees. The deputy this morning said, “Providing excellent client service is imperative”. What they should have said was, “Providing excellent client service is imperative and we failed.” That's what they should have said.
On page 8 of the report, paragraph 1.28 states:
We found that call centres were not focused on the needs of their clients when making decisions about call centre services and how they set service standards.
I'm going to run out of time quickly, and I know that. I'll just wait for the gavel to drop.
I'm glad to see that Treasury Board is saying that they're going to change their existing policy instruments, because at the end of the day, when we want to change behaviour, it's based on both the individual behaviour of employees and the policies that are being followed. If the policies aren't on there at that level, then we can't very well expect the departments to consider it a priority when the guiding Treasury Board Secretariat is not saying so. I am very pleased.
Again, these are some of the benefits that come out of the public accounts that really don't get registered as a dollar, but these things change behaviour and they change focus.
I have one question. It's not the most profound one I could ask, but it's the one that jumped out at me, I must say.
On page 15, at paragraph 1.60 about good old Shared Services Canada, the report says, “However, in order for departments and agencies to use these features”—new features for the phoning—“Shared Services Canada had to upgrade its existing information technology infrastructure—a task it overlooked during planning.” How can that be? How could something so important be overlooked during planning? It speaks to competency. It speaks to where senior management is not doing the job that they should.