Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2017

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I aim to be entertaining, if not helpful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right.

We'll now move to Mr. Deltell, please, for five minutes.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll try to do my best after the fantastic performance by my colleague from the NDP.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I would like to discuss Syrian refugees.

Your audit focused on the measures implemented and their results—on whether we were able to properly welcome refugees in large numbers in 2015, 2016 and recently. When we read your report, we see that your assessment measures are still pretty vague—and I am not blaming you for that. There are no specific indicators to help us determine whether it was a success or a failure. It is very difficult to measure the integration of immigrants or the success of their arrival.

Two things have to be considered: the overall situation and the situation in Quebec. Regarding the situation in Quebec, we understand that immigration is essentially the responsibility of that province because of an agreement concluded some 30 years ago between the two governments. We also understand that it is difficult for you to have access to that information.

What does the Canadian government have to do to be able to measure the quality of the welcome extended to immigrants in Canada more adequately?

[Michael Ferguson]

I would first like to specify that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is responsible for determining to what extent Syrian refugees have managed to integrate into Canada. That is one of its responsibilities. We have noted that the existing measures were related only to the federal government's activities, such as determining whether refugees' needs have been assessed in order to be able to decide what services are necessary to their integration and whether they have begun to learn one of Canada's two official languages. In short, those activities pertain only to the federal government.

In order to understand how refugees are settling in Canada, it is also very important to know about provincial-level services.

For example, are the children of Syrian refugees enrolled in schools? Do they have access to the necessary health care services or other services under provincial jurisdiction?

The department determined that such measures were important, but it has not obtained the information needed to assess the integration of refugees at the provincial level. I think it would be very important for the department to have access to that kind of information in order to be able to fulfill its responsibilities, which involve a good understanding of refugees' integration into Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Deltell.

Now we'll go back to Mr. Chen, please.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you very much. I want to start off by thanking the Auditor General and his team for their outstanding work and this set of reports.

I want to echo the concerns that have been expressed by my colleagues around the table, particularly Mr. Christopherson. He pointed to the Auditor General's opening statement in which he expressed the overall message that audit after audit, year after year, we still see that departments are focused on their own activities, not on the citizens' perspectives.

We've talked around the table today about the concerns of citizens, the experiences of citizens, the service to citizens. I want to start off by taking a moment to first deconstruct this terminology, because I believe it's very important that we are clear on who we serve. That, to me, is Canadians, in the most general, broadest, and most inclusive sense, whether we are talking about the oral health of first nations and Inuit children, or Syrian refugees who have now been welcomed to their new home, or indigenous women offenders who are not provided with culturally appropriate programs, or women offenders in general who are subjected to correctional programs designed for men, not women. To me, we need to be clear that we are talking about all Canadians and to understand who they are and be able to provide the types of services and programming that very clearly meet the needs of all Canadians.

With that said, I want to focus on the audit with respect to the Phoenix pay system.

Exhibit 1.2 on page 7 of the Auditor General's report shows a graph of the number of public servants with outstanding pay requests in 46 departments and agencies. This graph shows very clearly that over the course of two years, under the Miramichi pay centre, there were 15,000 public servants with outstanding pay requests. That number goes up to 35,000 in January 2016, when Phoenix was first adopted, and then we see an exponential increase in the number of outstanding pay requests, going up to the latest number, in June 2017, of 150,000.

If I were to take this graph at face value, I would understand it to be what it is described as—46 departments and agencies, the public services under those departments. However, reading the report tells me something a bit different. It points out that these outstanding pay requests were not capturing the information from all 46 departments over those two years, because some of them were not on board with those systems.

I'd like to hear the Auditor General's comment on what this means. To me, at face value, it means a significant and very worrisome increase in the number of cases. However, reading the report tells me that this increase can be attributed to departments that perhaps were not on the Miramichi pay system or the Phoenix pay system at certain points in time.

I'd like to hear the Auditor General's comments.

[Michael Ferguson]

I'll start trying to give you an explanation, and I'll ask Mr. Goulet for more details.

The graph is dealing with just the 46 departments, so it is dealing with the departments that were being served by the Miramichi pay centre. Certainly by the time all of the second wave was done, everything had been transferred, and everything that happened after that was happening in the new pay system, but of course there was a transition period in getting the 46 departments' pay requests all processed at the Miramichi pay centre. That would have happened over a period of time as their pay advisers were removed and the services were starting to be provided at the Miramichi pay centre.

I'm not sure, and maybe Mr. Goulet has the details, about exactly when those services started to move over to the pay centre, at what pace those 46 departments moved over, and by what time all of that was completed.

I'll ask Mr. Goulet to provide those details if he has them.

[Jean Goulet]

The move of employee files to Miramichi from the 46 departments occurred in three waves, starting in 2012 and going all the way up to the rollout of Phoenix. As you can see on the graph, with the employees going over to Miramichi, there's an increase in the number of employees with outstanding pay requests.

The initial intent of the department was that efficiencies would be generated with the centralization and this number would be coming down, but this was not the case. In the end, when Phoenix rolled out, the expectation of the department was that there would be a significant increase in efficiencies, which would compensate for the employees coming over to Miramichi and would also allow them to deal with the backlog that had accumulated from the wave of departments moving over to Miramichi. Obviously that did not materialize. Contrary to that, it actually spiked, because obviously Phoenix was not delivering the efficiencies that were promised.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Goulet and Mr. Chen.

We'll now go to Mr. Nuttall and then to Ms. Mendès.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wanted to continue with the CRA audit. After determining a 30% inaccuracy rate in the information provided by persons working for the CRA, your report goes into the information that's provided by CRA in their auditing of their own activities, whether it's inaccuracy—their 6% rate versus your 30%—or the number of calls, because they don't include the blocked calls or calls that don't reach somebody in that process.

You recommend training. You recommend better services in tracking what's going on at the CRA. What do you recommend as a follow-up time period? To go from a 30% inaccuracy rate, what would be a good timeline for us to look at this and to ask for more information on changes that hopefully won't be needed?

[Michael Ferguson]

They need to resolve this very quickly. I would suggest pushing for short time frames. A 30% error rate on people coming forward with tax questions certainly is not appropriate.

They need to get their own internal quality assurance measurement. They need to get that to the point where it is accurate, so that they can track the error rate and they don't have to wait for us or somebody else to do it.

They've been doing that, but again, the process they use is not independent. For example, they will make anonymous calls to the agents as well, and ask questions similar to the ones we asked. The agents say that when they get that call, their call display shows that the call is coming from a test line, so they know this call is monitoring their performance. Again, a right answer is to say you don't know and you have to pass it on. If you know you're being monitored, you might be more likely to say you don't know and you're going to pass it on, or there might be other ways that the behaviour is being affected.

They need to have a better way of making sure they get an accurate picture of the error rate. They need to get additional training in place; then they need to be able to demonstrate very quickly that this error rate is starting to go in the right direction.

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

Where is the issue? In your opinion, is this a top-down issue at this point? Is this strictly a training issue, whether it's on the quality assurance side or the people who are facing the client?

[Michael Ferguson]

I see three parts to the issue. There are the people answering the questions, and they need to have the ability to answer the questions. Again, in the audit we pointed out that in some cases they have to go to a number of different screens themselves to try to find the answer. The people need the tools and training to be able to answer the question.

The department is saying they need better technology to be able to respond to more calls, so they can explain that and explain to what extent that is part of the issue.

I think the other part is that they need to look at the front end as well. They need to look at their website. In their own survey, about 40% of the people who called on the individual lines, individuals looking for answers to their tax questions, said essentially that they couldn't find the answer to their tax question on the website. That was why they were calling. I think part of what they need to do is to be able to provide better, more easily accessible information on their website. That would help reduce the calls, and it would add more consistency to the responses as well.

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

With all that said, if your business is taxation and somebody asks you when the interest is going to be charged on taxes owing, this is basically almost as easy a question as you can get. It amazes me that we need a screen to do that. How is it that we don't have training in place to show these people? This is basic.

If somebody called me when I was a banker and asked, “Alex, when does the interest start accruing?”, I knew the answer to that every single time—and it's different on every single deal—because I just know my business. How do our employees not know their business when it comes to everybody in the country having the same answer?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, I think that's part of what is particularly concerning with our results. We were not asking very complex tax questions for which people had to get into a lot of detail in the Tax Act or anything. We were asking pretty general questions for which you would expect a high rate of right answers. I can't go any further, other than to say that we were obviously very concerned about the results that we were getting in these tests.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Ms. Mendès.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ferguson, I want to thank you and your entire team for joining us today.

I will pick up where Mr. Deltell left off and talk about the welcoming of Syrian refugees. I would like to inform you and all the members that the Quebec auditor general just presented her report today. It has a whole chapter on the welcoming of refugees and immigrants. I refer you to that report, which does not paint a glowing picture of the Government of Quebec's services in terms of the follow-up on welcoming and integration. Yet that is part of its responsibility. That is a major red flag, since the federal government cannot get the information needed to check the status of newcomers to Canada with regard to their integration and settlement.

That said, with Quebec being the exception, how are other provinces collecting the data that helps determine whether we are reaching our objectives in terms of welcoming, settlement and integration?

I already raised the issue concerning another topic. Client opinion surveys—in this case surveys of people receiving the services—are relatively easy to administer because we know where those individuals are, at least during the first two years. Would it be possible to recommend that the department make conducting surveys an ongoing practice to find out whether refugees have received health care services, education services or job search assistance? All that is part of the services provided. Could that possibility be considered and would it be desirable to collect that data?

[Michael Ferguson]

This audit helped us determine that it is important for the department to have access to that information in order to assess the integration of those refugees.

I think there are different ways to do that. We can reach an agreement with provincial governments to obtain that information, but the refugee survey you are talking about is also a possibility.

I think it would be important for the department to check whether it is possible to conduct such a survey of refugees.

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

I want to come back to data collection, which you confirmed to be an ongoing problem within our departments.

Presuming that those surveys were conducted, would you be in a position to determine whether the department is currently capable of collecting data and assessing it?

[Michael Ferguson]

There are always aspects that are specific to the process of administering a survey, such as whether or not people want to participate. There are also issues of personal information and other similar elements. I think that, overall, it is a good idea, but the department has to explain, if possible, why it chose to conduct that type of a survey. I think this is a question for the department.

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

It's not just a matter of conducting a survey, but of being able to really review the data afterwards and assess the results because, at the end of the day, that's often what such an audit yields.

[Michael Ferguson]

Of course.

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

Once again, I want to come back to your main message. It is all very well to be able to assess strictly in terms of figures whether the service has been provided or not, but there is an inability to gather that kind of information from Canadians in terms of quality. It is often even impossible to prove that a government's primary mandate of serving its citizens is being respected.

I will stop here.

Did you want to continue?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We can come back. We're back and forth now, so your time is pretty well up.

Now we'll move to Mr. Deltell, please.