Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 27th, 2020

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

I would imagine that when government activities or programs of any kind increase, it makes perfect sense that the workload of the Office of the Auditor General would increase as well.

[Sylvain Ricard]

Basically, there's a direct link.

If I may, I'd like to add a detail about the proportion of our budget as compared to government spending, which is not so good.

Even when you add up the $10.8 million we are asking for for 2018-2019, we are at the same level we were at after our budget reduction in 2011. Before the cut, we were at 0.03% of government spending. After the reduction, we were at 0.027%. We thought we had to take a reasonable approach and that we would ask for this amount later, but limit it to our 2014-2015 level.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

That's all the time we have.

I just want to make a mention to Mr. Uppal. The analyst just let me know that it has become a practice now for the committee to highlight data issues in briefing notes and draft reports as a result of those issues you were talking about. For the new members, be aware of that.

Mr. Blois wanted to ask a couple of quick questions before we wrap up.

Mr. Blois.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks again to our witnesses.

One thing I want to talk about is that certainly we have 580 full-time equivalent positions. This is only my third month in Parliament, and I didn't realize the great budget...and the fact that there is a lot of great work that goes on.

Can you talk to me, as someone who is not familiar with the history, about how your funding has increased over time? Has it always been 580 employees, or has your budget moved with inflation? Can you explain quickly the timeline of how that's changed over the last decade, perhaps?

[Sylvain Ricard]

If you're looking for specific numbers, I don't have all the numbers by memory.

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

Has your budget increased with inflation? Has it gone beyond inflation? Has it stayed stable over time? You mentioned a percentage on the basis of government spending and that it's gone down. Incrementally, has your budget increased over time with inflation or beyond inflation?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Like every organization, we had funding for the economic increase a few years ago. Some of the increase we still have to absorb, and we'll have to absorb forever the impact of not having gotten the economic increase for 2014-15 and 2015-16, going by memory, including the additional effort we have to give to Phoenix to pay our people. That amounts to about $1.5 million a year. Maybe that's part of the answer.

Whether we get the economic increase or not is one thing. Let's say it's perfect and we get all of that. Adding new mandates without funding, having government spending go up by 30% over a number of years, the new reality on the technology side and having the tools to do business and the environment get more and more complex, the pension fund, investing in complicated—

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

I take the point that it's more nuanced than perhaps just suggesting how the funding has changed. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I'd be interested in knowing how that has changed, so perhaps that's something we could ask for at some point.

I want to move on to the comment from my colleague Mr. Kelly. In his remarks, he talked about how we got here. He very eloquently talked about not getting into partisan politics, and I certainly appreciate that. However, I think it's important to note, for the record, that there was $6.5 million cut under the Harper government, which equated to 60 employees.

We talked about the independence piece, and I think that's very important. There is no doubt—Canadians aren't going to suggest you shouldn't have independent means of funding—but it goes back to who watches the watcher, so to speak.

Our Crown corporations have to be accountable to someone, so for my benefit, having not been here in the last Parliament, would that independent funding provision that you're suggesting include your entire budget, or would it be a certain base amount, and then you would come back and explain why—because government programs are expanding or because you want to go in certain directions?

Of course there is a statutory piece that guarantees a basic income right now of $10.2 million, and I appreciate that this is far below what your average estimates would be per year, but is that a sign-off for all your funding, or is it just a certain base to ensure that you have that moving forward?

[Andrew Hayes]

It's difficult to answer that question in the abstract. What I'll say, though, is that the recommendation in the legacy report of the last public accounts committee, which I thought was well written, provides the foundation for what you're asking about.

The recommendation refers to the fact that our funding should be stable. There can be fluctuations, but—let me put it another way—we wouldn't want to see a situation where, from one year to the next, our funding fluctuates such that we can't hire the people we need in short order or, on the other hand, that we have to lay off a number of employees. The stability of funding will be important, however it works.

You make a great point about the fact that we should be accountable. We welcome accountability. We are a major promoter of accountability. We have no problem justifying our funding requests, and we appreciate the committee's role in holding us to account.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Blois.

Thank you very much to the Office of the Auditor General: Ms. Hogan, Mr. Ricard, Mr. Hayes and Mr. Dompierre. We appreciate this as a first step, and we look forward to the ongoing relationship we'll have with your office over time.

I'm going to ask right now that we suspend for one second, and then we'll come back in camera to talk about future business.

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]