Public Accounts Committee on Dec. 13th, 2016

[Jean Lebel]

We will. The point is very well taken. My apologies. This is the first time I've appeared in front of public accounts. You know, I have nothing to hide, and neither does our board. We will correct this deficiency, Mr. Chair.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I think you're more than capable of answering the questions, and I appreciate your professionalism and the candour with which you addressed the committee today. We've seldom had people in front of public accounts in the last year who answered the questions with such vigour and provided a lot of insight into the questions that were being asked of them.

I wanted to touch a bit on measurability of fundraising effectiveness. I was impressed with the idea of setting goals that are indeterminately high, possibly, but possibly obtainable as well.

In your strategic plan going forward, does it continue in the same pattern? How do you intend to continue that cycle? Do you intend to keep trying to set goals that are higher than what you believe you can attain, or do you believe that, in the long term, you'll actually get to the level that you originally stated?

[Jean Lebel]

That's a very good question. I'm going to be very humble and honest. Now that we have targets and indicators, it's always a challenge on how to establish that. I can tell you with all our board of governors, we have numerous conversations with our staff. Because there was no baseline, you have to set one. You set one from evidence that you have or evidence that is out there, but you really aren't sure. In the last year at the performance management report session that we had, we already saw that there were some indicators that we are really overshooting, and to four, five, six times what we were expecting. Does it mean that we're performing very well? No. That means that maybe it's the wrong indicator or the information gathered has a bias, so we're working on this.

Fundamentally, we want to make sure that the targets that we set for ourselves at a corporate level are reasonable—according to our opinion, the opinion of our board, and experts—to be accomplished over a five-year period. If we miss them, we want to make sure we understand why. This is why this plan is flexible enough to have course correction. Let's say that a program is not performing at all because of conditions in the field, because it is simply not the right approach. We can pull the plug. We can say, “let's use the resources towards this strategic plan because it's not delivering.”

We have a system in place that is an ongoing live system that tracks where we are and gives the opportunity to do course correction in order to maximize the chances to attain our goal.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I have just one other question—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Mr. Saini, I want to take the opportunity to welcome you. You're not a regular member of the committee.

You get a whole minute to make your point, sir.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I'll ask it very quickly. Thank you very much for coming here, Mr. Lebel.

You mentioned in your opening comments two types of funding models, the co-funding model and a parallel program. Would the parallel program be when the other organization is going to be spending money, money you will not have but they will have to spend the money on their own?

What is the guarantee that when you have a program, they'll actually come forward with that program? Also, the OAG mentioned something about reputational risk and that you were going to put together a study group by the end of September 2016.

[Jean Lebel]

It has been done.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

If you can just comment on those two. Thank you.

[Jean Lebel]

Okay. These are very good questions. The parallel agreement means that we have a common program or project, we're putting both our resources on the table, and we have mechanisms to track this, but the money is not blended.

The Tim Hortons case I brought up in my presentation is quite simple. Tim Hortons came to IDRC and said, “We have a challenge with our coffee crop in Colombia both in quality and in quantity, and we think that it's related to climate change.” IDRC said, “We have programs that we have been funding with two universities that could help you.” We are funding the research for new farming techniques, new crops of coffee, new processes in light of climate change adaptation, and we're pushing this to the co-op farmers association of Colombia of coffee farmers.

Tim Hortons is bringing its resources to the co-op in order to enhance their ability to seize the opportunity of the research.

There's nothing more difficult than to change the habit of a farmer. You know this. If he loses his crop, he loses his revenue and he's in a dramatic situation. Through this enhancement and push from the coffee buyers, Tim Hortons, the farmer has an opportunity to say if Tim Hortons is pushing us to take this technology, and this technology has been validated to be effective, we have a better chance to improve our supply, improve quality, and increase the revenue of the farmer in Colombia.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

We'll conclude with that good question to a great answer. Thanks for keeping it tight.

Colleagues, if you'll indulge me two minutes for Monsieur Godin, that will ensure that everyone on the committee has had an opportunity to have their say.

With your indulgence, I'll turn to Monsieur Godin, and give him two minutes on the clock.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, fellow members.

Ms. Lamarche, Mr. Ricard, and Mr. Lebel, thank you for taking part in this exercise.

Mr. Lebel, there's something I'd like to come back to. You help businesses and communities with development. I'd like to know when your involvement ends.

You have had success stories, but you have no doubt had experiences where you realized that the project was a lost cause, that you had poorly assessed the situation for whatever reason, be it the specific circumstances or a geopolitical change. There can be 56 perfectly good reasons why a project does not work out, and that's entirely valid.

When does your involvement end, in both good and bad projects?

[Jean Lebel]

I'm going to give you a very tangible example of a good situation.

For 15 or so years, the centre provided research funding for community-based approaches to natural resource management. Despite being very conducive to success, the initiative was carried out on what I would call a microscopic level, involving a few villages and communities. The research showed that it was very difficult to apply the model to a regional or national level, because the methods and approaches used were not suitable. Furthermore, the civil society sector is doing tremendous work on this front and is much better-equipped than IDRC. Consequently, we gave up completely on that research dimension, having gone through the entire cycle and proven its effectiveness. There were, however, many examples of situations where things didn't work. All of that knowledge was passed on.

We are not involved in setting up aid programs either. That isn't our mandate; rather, it is Global Affairs Canada's. For instance, the department can use the research to shape development plans, and it's doing that more and more.

I'll give you an example. Right now, we are working on the development of livestock vaccines. Livestock animals are often seen as four-legged banks, so to speak, that can help cover education and health care costs. Through a partnership that brings together South Africa, Kenya, and Canada, we are working in Alberta on a vaccine against five common livestock diseases in Africa, one that is resistant to heat and requires no boosters, in other words, one that can be administered in a single dose. The vaccine could be ready in five years. That is the research component. If we want it to have a wider reach, however, development agencies will need to take the vaccine to another level.

You asked me to give you an example of a situation in which we withdraw from a project when things aren't going well.

We withdraw from a project in countries plagued by conflict, for instance, when the safety of the researchers whose work we are funding is in jeopardy.

We also withdraw from a project when research teams repeatedly come up with little in the way of results. We do recognize that, in research, a certain degree of learning has to happen and a group may not meet its objectives. In such cases, we endeavour to figure out why the group failed to meet its objectives, and we try again taking into account what we've learned. We do not tolerate an endless string of failures, though.

In addition, very seldom are we involved in non-research projects. In fact, that's in our risk management plan. It may seem trivial, but our offices receive a phenomenal number of ideas in the course of a year. Some hold tremendous potential, but when we take a closer look, we see that they do not constitute research, and we therefore do not fund them.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Very good, merci.

That concludes the time for this hearing.

On behalf of the committee, we appreciate you being here today. We very much appreciate that you understand our point regarding the chair. I think we got off to a little bit of rocky start in terms of your response, but you quickly understood where we were going and the reason for our concern. We very much appreciate that understanding.

I would also underscore the remarks of my colleague Mr. Chen, who went out of his way to say that, as these things go, this is a pretty good report.

Oftentimes, it must feel to some departments like it's a no-win situation in front of public accounts because it's never perfect. Given some of the things that we deal with, things can get pretty hairy in this place, but the idea is that we're trying to change behaviour at the end of the day.

Believe it or not, we're not looking for headlines. We use these reports to bring matters to full light. I'm speaking as much to the rest of the government as I'm speaking to you. Our point is to change behaviour.

In a perfect world, we would love to have reports like this get even better every time. There will always be a few things, but in the main, given how harshly we hold people to account who are way off where they should be in terms of how they do things, when we get a department or an entity that comes in and for the most part is doing a pretty good job, that needs to be recognized. That's what we are all about. That's why I wanted to underscore Mr. Chen's comments, who by the way is the newest member of this committee, and quickly understood the culture here and what we're trying to achieve.

On behalf of my colleagues and this committee, thank you so much for your appearance. We will be issuing a report, and if we have any follow-up business with you, you'll hear from us in that regard.

Unless there's any other business to come before us in the matter of this chapter, I will suspend the committee as we prepare to go into our business session.

Thank you again.

[Proceedings continue in camera]