Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 25th, 2020

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Excuse me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Now we go to the last motion.

[The Clerk]

On departmental action plans:

That all organizations that have been subject to a performance audit or a special examination [report] by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada provide a detailed action plan to address the audit recommendations which have been agreed to - including specific actions, timelines for their completion and responsible individuals - to the Public Accounts Committee and the Office of the Auditor General...within six months of the audit being tabled in the House of Commons; and

- That organizations that are invited to appear before the Public Accounts Committee to discuss the findings of an audit should, when feasible, provide an action plan to the Committee prior to the hearing; and

- That action plans and progress reports received by the Committee be published on the Committee’s website.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Steinley.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I was wondering whether, given that it says, “organizations that are invited to appear before the Public Accounts Committee to discuss the finding of an audit should, when feasible, provide an action plan to the Committee", we should put a date on it, such as a couple of days before, so that we'd have time to review it before they came to committee.

If they present it at the committee, we don't have much time to read it, but if they could present it a day or two before, maybe we could have it and review it and come forward with better questions.

[The Clerk]

We can, certainly. It would be an amendment to this.

Traditionally, it has sometimes been tricky. Usually these—I don't know the figure, but more than half of them—were provided beforehand, but not always with a whole lot of time remaining.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Kelly.

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

Mr. Steinley raises an excellent point that. In practice, in the previous Parliament, most of the time that is in fact what happened. We would receive a report of the Auditor General; we would then have a study in which, a number of weeks later....

The organization would have received the report and known many of its conclusions before it was even tabled by the Auditor General. It would have plenty of time to get its act together and create an action plan. Typically, there would be a response that we knew ahead of time.

The failure of a department to actually do what you are commenting on and provide us with a timely action plan to address the report would make for a very uncomfortable meeting for any department that came here and failed to do exactly that. That's why perhaps it should be right in the motion that they do so, but—

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I would ask that.

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

—if a department came in without a plan and without acknowledging a report of the Auditor General, they would get ripped apart by this committee, I would hope.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Blois.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I agree with Mr. Kelly's points. As opposed to perhaps reading it into the motion, we try to make sure that's a practice that we communicate—whether through the clerk as a committee, or through you, Mr. Chair—to the departments, that if they can send it in advance for us to review, that would be helpful.

I don't know if it's required to be read into the motion, which I think is what Mr. Kelly is getting at.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Steinley.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Listening to my colleagues, should we put something like, “in advance they must bring forward...prior to coming to the committee”? I understand that days might not work, but putting strong wording would ensure that people who come before the committee understand that we should have their action plan before they appear.

[The Clerk]

Are you thinking about a specific time frame, 48 hours, or days, weeks?

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I'd be okay with 48 hours, but my colleagues have said that sometimes the precedent has been that they have brought this forward. Deadlines are always good. If it's in the routine procedures, I think that would be a good thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Sorbara.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

What was the standard practice in the prior committee?

[The Clerk]

It changed a little throughout the years. The motion you have here is the third version of the last Parliament. They adopted the first version of it at the beginning. At first, they changed specifically “departments and agencies” by adding “all organizations”; and they added at the end, “special examinations”, which was not included at the beginning of the previous Parliament.

If you go back to the beginning, the first motion was in March 2009. There has always been a reiteration of this motion, slightly changed, but overall the whole idea was that every time the Auditor General presents reports in the House, automatically the departments, organizations, or whatever, were required to provide an action plan, which the clerk would then put on the website. That's why our website is different from all the others. It starts with all the action plans from all previous parliaments. They're all there. If there is an update to the action plan, it's put there, too.

The job of the auditors at one point is to review those and say, “Oh, this hasn't been done”, or “this is okay”, or “we are lagging”, or whatever. Then they produce a report to you once or twice a year and say, “So far in the past year we notice that some recommendations were not followed”, or “some action plans are lacking”, or whatever. Then the committee had a follow-up mechanism to make sure that action plans and reports from the Auditor General and from the committee were followed, to track whether departments were following our advice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Longfield.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

As a new member of the committee, I'd be interested in that website. I haven't seen that.

[The Clerk]

It is www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/PACP.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

This was a motion adopted by the committee in its prior reincarnation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Correct, and what they want to do is make an amendment to add “that the reports be provided 48 hours in advance to the committee”.

Mr. Blois.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

On the 48 hours, again, I think Mr. Kelly spoke to it. It's not necessarily needed, but I don't see any harm in using it.

I can't speak for the rest of my colleagues, but I'm pretty sure that we're fine.