Evidence of meeting #80 for Public Accounts in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was audit.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michael Ferguson  Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Jean Goulet  Principal, Office of the Auditor General
Martin Dompierre  Principal, Office of the Auditor General
Casey Thomas  Principal, Office of the Auditor General
Carol McCalla  Principal, Office of the Auditor General

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

If I can just follow up on these tables—and these are very self-explanatory—one has the question of “When will the interest begin to be charged on my 2015 initial assessment?” That question has a direct monetary impact on the person who is asking the question. The incorrect response rate was 84%, meaning 16% of the time the person gave the right answer—which was May 2—or referred to somebody else. Somebody was given a wrong answer 84% of the time, and that has a monetary impact on them.

What happens when the person starts being charged interest, let's say, prior to what he or she was told in a phone call? How do we know? You've taken these notes and put this into a report because it was an audit, but when Joe Blow or Joanne on the street calls and gets an answer and then gets charged prematurely, how do they fight this? How do they deal with the government?

9:40 a.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Michael Ferguson

I'll answer, and I'll ask Mr. Dompierre to correct me if I go wrong on this.

If a person does not make their payment by the time it's due, then the CRA, in all likelihood, is going to charge them interest.

Then, I guess, if the person wants to take that up with the CRA, they will have to navigate the system again to get back in contact with CRA and try to say, “Well, wait a minute. You told me I had to pay it on this date, and I paid it on this date, and now you're charging me interest.” They would have to navigate that system all over again—one they perhaps had some frustration navigating in the first place—just to be able to get the original question answered. How that will end up being resolved, I don't know. It wasn't the point of the question, but it would put the individual back to having to try to take up their issue again with CRA.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

I know this wasn't necessarily the direct focus of the report, but have we seen circumstances when incorrect information was given out by the federal government and the federal government then changed the amount they're saying is owed, based on the information they gave out originally, or did we just not get there?

9:45 a.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Michael Ferguson

No, we couldn't get there because, again, we weren't asking taxpayer-specific questions. To get to that type of detail, we would have had to go through a taxpayer file. We just asked the questions in a general sense.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

Thank you so much.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

Thank you, Mr. Nuttall. You have 10 seconds, but I'll take it.

Did you ever ask CRA, when you were given false information, if you could have that answer in writing? I've been told by constituents—and it's probably happened to us—that when you're on the phone after finally getting through, after being blocked so many times, when you get the information, all you have is really your word against somebody else's, because it's on the phone.

Would you ever ask if you could have that answer in an email or in writing?

9:45 a.m.

Principal, Office of the Auditor General

Martin Dompierre

Mr. Chair, we did not make that sort of specific request. We were trying to keep the exchange anonymous as we were getting a right or wrong answer. If it was right, we were saying thank you; if not, we were cutting off the conversation at that point—

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

I guess that would make sense. You wouldn't just say to send it to the Auditor General of Canada's email address. They might catch on.

Go ahead, Mr. Ferguson.

9:45 a.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Michael Ferguson

Of course, as you can see, we documented all the answers we got as part of our audit procedures. We didn't go that step—as you say, that would have been a little odd—but we documented all the answers we received.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

All right. Thank you.

We'll now go back to Mr. Lefebvre. Vous avez cinq minutes.

November 23rd, 2017 / 9:45 a.m.

Liberal

Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON

Merci, monsieur le président.

I'd like to continue on the concern raised by Mr. Christopherson with respect to the comments you started and finished your statement with, Mr. Ferguson. I'll cite them:

I find myself delivering this message audit after audit, and year after year because we still see that departments are focused on their own activities, and not on the citizen's perspective. The audits we have delivered this week are no exception, as you will see.

Mr. Christopherson asked you, with respect, what more we can do to try to improve or change the way the government provides the services. From what I'm seeing, most of the time our public service is focused on delivering a program on time and on budget—basically, to deliver it and get results—and the lens of the citizen is not something that is taken into account.

I'm wondering whether you think it's a good idea that we bring the Clerk of the Privy Council to this committee and have that discussion as to how we can change or add that lens, to ensure that it is provided by the Clerk of the Privy Council to all deputy ministers.

9:45 a.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Michael Ferguson

I'll let the committee consider whether it should bring the clerk forward. What encourages me is certainly the committee's interest in trying to get the departments and the whole government machinery to understand the importance of this aspect.

This is just something that is coming to me right now, but perhaps some sort of a review of departmental performance reports could be done to look for any indicators in them that are dealing with services to citizens. In some of those you might see that at least on the surface some of them look good, but that some of the other ones weren't really telling very much about the service. You might want to do something like that.

I probably just created a whole bunch of work for your analysts.

9:50 a.m.

Liberal

Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON

That's great, that's fine, because I'm looking at the macro level right now. We're going to have the time to deal with all of your reports one by one, and we will go through all of them. I hope we do.

That brings me to my second question.

In my observations in the past few years of being here, every time there was a transformational program or they were trying to transform something—and we saw it with Shared Services, and now we're seeing it with Phoenix, which are large projects and we all recognize that—it's as if there's an incapacity or a serious difficulty in basically getting the result that is aimed for. It's a concern that program after program and transformation after transformation, we're either off budget, or we're not on time, or we're not getting the results, or it's not at all what we thought it was because of various reasons.

What internal changes should be brought forward? If we keep doing the same thing in the next project when we're trying to transform or change something that we've done in the past, from what I'm seeing, we'll just get the same results.

How can you advise our public service and the deputy ministers? When they have a new project to transform or change something, what can be added? What has to be done?

9:50 a.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Michael Ferguson

I would suggest probably a couple of things.

One is that when there is the original acceptance of a project—if you're talking about a payroll system or about Shared Services, whatever you're talking about—the chances that the project sponsor will be able to come forward at the conception point of the idea and the acceptance of the project and give a precise number for how much that is going to cost, a precise date for when it is going to be delivered, and a precise number for the end impact in terms of whether there are going to be efficiencies are slight . I would say it would be extremely rare for somebody to be able to come in at the conception of these very complex projects and say this is going to cost x number of dollars, I'm going to deliver it on this date, and it's going to save you this amount of money.

Those things need to be updated during the course of the whole project, based on what is being learned through the course of the project. There will need to be some understanding that this is starting to look more complex than originally thought, so maybe it's going to cost more or maybe we need to delay it some more.

Those things will all have to be considered: “Maybe we can't do everything we thought we were going to be able to do in the first place, or maybe we can do this, but it's not going to provide all the efficiencies that we thought.”

Those things all need to be updated during the course of the project. I think what happens too often is that these projects get anchored on amounts that were established very early on. I think that's one part of understanding these types of projects.

I would say the other thing is to never underestimate the importance of a good governance structure on complex projects. It can't all be in the hands of the individuals or the team that is responsible for delivering the project. There needs to be some oversight by people who are not just the project deliverers. Then there needs to be some independent expertise that can advise the individuals charged with the oversight. That could be by internal audit or outside evaluators, but they should be reporting to the people with the oversight, not reporting to the people who are delivering the project.

I'm not saying that's what's happened in any of these cases. I'm saying that conceptually, those are the types of things I think are needed.

9:50 a.m.

Liberal

Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON

Correct me if I'm wrong, then. What you just suggested does not exist right now in the public service in the way that the governance structure is modelled.

9:50 a.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Michael Ferguson

No, I'm not saying it doesn't exist; I'm saying that conceptually those are the types of things that need to be in place. We would have to look at it project by project to say whether it was managed this way or it was managed some other way.

9:55 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

Thank you very much. We were two minutes over there.

We'll now go to Mr. Christopherson, please.

9:55 a.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Great. It's an excellent discussion. Thank you.

I saw this in the lobby. I sort of knew these things existed, but I really didn't.... This is from the Office of the Taxpayers' Ombudsman. It says, “Fairness—a right, not a privilege.”

First off, is there any interaction between your office and the ombudsman's office? If so, what is that?

9:55 a.m.

Principal, Office of the Auditor General

Martin Dompierre

We consult them. Basically, when we decide to do an audit, we consult them for information as we start an audit. That would be one—

9:55 a.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Are you able to tell us what sort of feedback you got from them initially when you touched base with them?

9:55 a.m.

Principal, Office of the Auditor General

Martin Dompierre

I think they had raised the idea that there was some concern about the call centres. They do their own sort of complaints mechanism when they receive complaints from citizens about issues. I would say the call centres were in the top five in the list of concerns by citizens.

9:55 a.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Yes. Did they say what they were doing about it?

9:55 a.m.

Principal, Office of the Auditor General

Martin Dompierre

They said that they react to these complaints, but that's—

9:55 a.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

I can tell you what they did about it—nothing. It's right in their report.

I'm raising this because it's so timely. One of the things we do is not only look for results; we also take a look at the oversight. Was there proper oversight, and if not...?

Mr. Ferguson just alluded to some of that. I have to tell you that $2.3 million of taxpayer money goes for this ombudsman who reports to the minister only.

It's an interesting read, colleagues. For instance, they say, “Our role is not to be an advocate for taxpayers”, yet under the bold heading of “Who we serve”, they say, “We serve taxpayers”.

It's a very lovely brochure, by the way—very nice and glossy, with lots of big pictures. A lot of time was spent on this. It's a nice product.

Anyway, in this issue, buried on page 23, we see $2.3 million, yet one of the biggest issues found in this study through the auditor was the inability of Canadians to even connect. If ever there was a disconnect, it's the inability to connect, so the biggest issue we're facing—and here's what this $2.3 million got us on this file. Under “Connecting with the CRA through the general enquiries lines”, we see:

Our Office has received numerous complaints from taxpayers and representatives in recent years, claiming it is very difficult to connect with the CRA's general enquiries telephone lines. A recurring complaint from taxpayers is they reach a busy signal, regardless of the time of day they call, forcing them to make multiple calls.

That's dead accurate. What did they do about it?

Given the announcement of increased funding for telephone access and initiatives underway by the CRA, our Office is not opening an examination at this time,

—but it's okay, everybody—

...we are monitoring this issue.

There was $2.3 million worth of monitoring, and it took the Auditor General to tell us that we have a problem.

Normally we don't go in this direction, but I'll be talking to colleagues about how we look at this. This whole office exists to help Canadians deal with these kinds of issues, and from what I can see, they failed. Part of our review, and maybe it's part of the prescription for solving it, is that we ask the minister—because this ombudsman reports to the minister—to change the mandate, review it, or do something.

I saw that it cost $2.3 million to run this office and that on the biggest issue we're facing, that's all they had to say. The minister said, “It's okay, because we're increasing the budget,” so the ombudsman said, “Oh, okay. Obviously it's no big problem. It will get solved.” That's not how oversight is supposed to work.

To the taxpayers' ombudsman, we're coming.

I'll just leave it at that. It's more of a statement. It's a bit of a rant more than anything, but I was kind of frustrated. If there's room for a response, I would love it. If not, I'm happy to have my rant. Thank you.

9:55 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

There's actually no room, but we did enjoy your rant.