Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 25th, 2020

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

I would ask you to inquire and find out if they're just waiting for the committee to re-establish itself to send a response. I'd like to see that happen immediately. It goes right to the heart of our business here. We're going to immediately be asked to set our calendar over which reports to study, and the issue of having reports to study is tied up in the budget. I'll leave it at that.

[Dillan Theckedath]

In the last Parliament, one of the 70 reports that was presented in the House by the committee was a legacy document called “Do Service Well”. I believe it has been circulated to the members. It has a number of recommendations and a summary at the end. One or two of the recommendations were around the issue of funding for the operations of the Office of the Auditor General.

Just to present the committee with the latest information, I had a chance to speak with senior officials in the OAG yesterday. For budget 2019, the Auditor General's office had requested additional funding of $10.8 million to address various shortcomings. These included operational requirements, as well as some critical IT infrastructure elements that speak to IT security, operational efficiency, etc. After some back and forth, some intervention on behalf of this committee and the back and forth with Finance, that request for budget 2019 for the additional $10.8 million was ultimately turned down.

What I understand is that on January 20, the OAG made a subsequent submission for budget 2020, in which they are asking for these additional funds again, to address some of these issues. It should also be pointed out that there is an additional request now to move up its work on the planned audit of infrastructure programs and the Infrastructure Bank. That is going to be moved up by this Parliament. The Auditor General's office will have to contend with that as well.

That's where we stand right now. As of January 20, the OAG has submitted its request for budget 2020, and they are waiting to hear back from Finance on how that's going to go.

On a related note, one of the recommendations of the past committee was that the government writ large consider alternate funding arrangements to allow for better long-term planning, stable long-term planning, that was outside of the parliamentary process, still involving the estimates and implementation acts but with more predictable and stable funding. Though nothing has been promised, the OAG has told me that those discussions have begun with the Privy Council Office.

That's where we stand right now, Mr. Kelly.

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

That's fantastic.

Perhaps, Dillan, you could maybe give us a little bit more on.... You mentioned the legacy document, and I'm glad you did. For any member who hasn't looked at it yet, if you're new to the committee, it spells out pretty clearly a lot of information about how we try to do things here.

There's the other outstanding issue. On the issue of funding, I'm glad the Privy Council is talking about perhaps moving in that direction. What about the Auditor General's appointment? We have an interim Auditor General right now who is on his second temporary appointment. I didn't even think it was permitted under the legislation to reappoint on an interim basis. Do we know what's going to happen that way and what the process is? Can the clerk comment on that?

[Dillan Theckedath]

I believe Michel might be able to comment on that.

[The Clerk]

Yes. It is almost one year now since Mr. Ricard was appointed as interim Auditor General. He started in March of last year. Last January, the government started the process of looking for a new Auditor General. Technically, the appointment of Mr. Ricard is ending at the end of March. My guess is that either he's going to be renewed for a short period because they're not done with the process that was started in January, or we should receive soon, in March, a certificate of nomination for the Auditor General, be it Mr. Ricard or someone else who was chosen through the process. I understand that PCO is managing the whole process right now.

When we get that certificate of nomination, it is going to be sent first to the committee. We will have a small number of days to call him, have him testify on his credentials and then make a report, with recommendations. It's not like it is in the American Senate. We don't reject nominations like that.

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

This really goes right to the heart of the issue of the relationship of how the office is funded and how the government appoints the individual. We had Mr. Ferguson, before his untimely death, who raised the issue of funding, both in terms of the inadequacy of his budget to actually do his job but also in the way that the Auditor General is in the uncomfortable position of having to be the person who goes hat in hand to a minister who controls his budget.

We really should, from a governance point of view, decouple a lot of these things. I don't know if that's perhaps beyond this committee, but we made some recommendations on that, which are contained in the legacy document.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Longfield.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I think Mr. Kelly is bringing up points that were also on my mind in terms of what's happened since the last Parliament. I'm hoping that when we get our briefing we'll be able to get that. If it isn't in the presentation we'll be able to ask some questions. A heads-up that those are the things we're looking for so when the Auditor General's staff prepare him to come here we'll be asking those kinds of questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Those are all great points. I think one of the things we wanted to do is bring people in to help us get up to speed. As you look at the agenda outline, if there's anything we're missing that we need to circle back on, let's make sure we do that. We'll make sure we have the AG here on Thursday. We'll do a quick meeting on committee business to make sure we're catching all the things we need to that have been talked about here. Then we can go from there.

Are there any other questions?

That was a great first meeting, everyone. I look forward to working with everybody.

The meeting is adjourned.