Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 27th, 2020

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move over to Mr. Green for two and a half minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I heard some concerns around some of your legacy IT infrastructure. I wonder if you would take a moment and flag that for me, because I'm reliving the anxiety of Phoenix. I'm just wondering if you want to talk about your legacy IT infrastructure for a moment.

[Sylvain Ricard]

Do you mean ours at the OAG?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, just as a general—

[Sylvain Ricard]

Because there have been reports from the Auditor General over the years in terms of the broader picture in the federal government....

So, as I mentioned earlier, one of our main systems is running on DOS—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's wild. DOS is wild. That's....

[Sylvain Ricard]

It's running on DOS, and it creates all sorts of difficulties from both a security perspective and an operational perspective, because basically, they're not supported anymore. You can't turn to a supplier and get updates or get patches as we call them. That doesn't exist. So, that's our reality.

As I said earlier, when we brought forward a request for additional funding in 2017, that was at the heart of it. We just came out of an IT security self-assessment. As we were doing the self-assessment, as a good practice, we asked our internal audit people to provide assurance to the Auditor General that it was done properly and fully. The report is on the office website, and it was clear that we were not doing great at all. We were not in a good place. We managed to do some advancement with the $7 million we got through the 2018 budget, but we will not be in a good place from a security perspective, at least not before 2022.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That begs the question of the concerns around recruitment, because I can't imagine a modern workforce being fluent in DOS applications. I'm wondering if this has any impacts on recruitment.

[Sylvain Ricard]

Well, I—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If I could just extend that on the recruitment side, is there also a challenge to bring on the best and the brightest just based on how long it takes for the hiring process? I know on a previous committee....

[Sylvain Ricard]

Indeed, that's one of the realities that come with it. You cannot interest young people these days with old technology. That's a major challenge.

I mentioned earlier that back in 2011, when we returned some funds, we had just replaced our key audit tool and we now have to replace it, but it's challenge. We're talking about lots of money.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You're competing with Deloitte and all of these other private sector groups.

[Sylvain Ricard]

In terms of recruitment, obviously, that's direct competition for our business, so that doesn't help us. What helps us, though, is that we managed over the last year to work hard at earning two things: being an employer of choice in the national capital region and being an employer of choice—and I'm using the generic name of it here—for young Canadians. We celebrated that with the staff about a month ago.

However, the technology is in the way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

I'm wondering if DOS is unhackable for the new generation, because they don't understand the language.

That finishes our second round. We're going to get into our third round here.

We have another half hour, so let's make sure we get through all the members. Then, if additional people have questions, we certainly have time within the next half, so we'll do that.

We're going to move over to Mr. Kelly; then I have Ms. Yip and we'll go from there.

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

Thank you.

I want to comment, maybe, or to ask some questions building upon some of the other questions that have come up.

Mr. Sorbara asked you about an independent mechanism, which as a committee we did discuss in the previous Parliament. There was cross-party support, I think. Certainly, I supported the idea of a different method by which the Auditor General's budget could be set, other than by going cap in hand and making a funding request.

As for how we got here, yes, it seemingly was not a problem until 2017. Even in 2011, with the deficit reduction act, which was optional for the Office of the Auditor General, the Auditor General of the day chose to accept and participate in the deficit reduction act. The Auditor General at the time thought it was the right thing to do to support the objective of the government of the day.

At that time, the Auditor General told the committee, which was chaired by our esteemed former colleague David Christopherson—and David reminded us of this repeatedly in the last Parliament—that it was going to hurt, but that they could do it, that they would participate and, yes, they had the resources to do what they needed to do.

What changed between then and 2017? I'm not even really interested in litigating that at committee. The point is that we need to have a way that your office can get the resources it needs to do its job without seeming like any other department that goes before Finance and Treasury Board and says, “Here are the things we would like to do and here is the budget we need.” The government of day has to say, “Well, you're competing with all these other interests. Here's what you're asking for, but we're not going to give you all of it—we're going to give you some.”

An independent officer of Parliament can't operate in that environment. An independent officer of Parliament, one who is as critical as the Auditor General, has to know that he has the resources. When you appeared at committee in the last Parliament, your response in the negative in answer to what is a standard question asked by every chair—“Do you have the resources to do your job?”—was unprecedented. It's a real problem.

It doesn't help Canadians for anybody to get into point-scoring or anything on this issue. I completely agree that we need to have an independent mechanism by which your office is resourced properly, and I'm very glad to hear that there's already discussion with PCO. I hope that this can just quietly happen and we can it put aside and not worry about whether or not you have enough money.

This brings me to the present context, where it's even more uncomfortable, Monsieur Ricard, in that you are appearing before us as the interim Auditor General. I understand that a permanent Auditor General for the next 10 years will have to be named within the next few weeks at the latest, I think. I'm not even certain what deadlines we're under. It is not fair to you or to anybody who holds your office, especially under an “interim” tag, to have to be involved in a budget submission that the Minister of Finance has to juggle among other competing priorities.

I don't know if I even have a question here. This is a rant and a recitation of some of the history. I'll ask you to comment on any of these points in whatever time I have left.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

He's letting you off the hook, because you only have 30 seconds left. I know there were no politically charged comments there at all.

You have 30 seconds to respond.

[Sylvain Ricard]

I will confirm that I was clear last year, that without the $10.8 million we're not properly funded, and that's still the case. It's not appropriate for us to have to negotiate our funding level with organizations that we audit. That's just not appropriate.

Getting funding from Parliament is for independence reasons. Then you have the negotiation process, or whatever we call it, which, in my mind, goes against that.

To answer your question about a date, I will give you the date I know, and that is public information. My interim goes to March 28. I can't say more than that. The process belongs to PCO, but I can reassure you of one thing: Interim or not, we're doing what we have to do. We say what we have to say, including on the budget front.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to turn it over to Ms. Yip, for five minutes.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

It's wonderful to see you all back again.

In your departmental results report, your target was to have at least 65% of your audits reviewed by parliamentary committees. The actual result was 58%.

Can you comment on that? How can our committee help you reach your target?

[Sylvain Ricard]

I wasn't quite prepared to discuss the performance report. Which year are you referring to?

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

It was tabled yesterday.

[Sylvain Ricard]

The one that was tabled yesterday.... Okay, fair enough.

[Andrew Hayes]

I can answer that. I want to preface it by saying that my comments are not critical of any committee. The public accounts committee has been studying the Auditor General's reports regularly. The reports of the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development go to the environment committee, and not every report we have submitted gets studied by that committee. I think it's a function of the fact that the public accounts committee has a strong mandate to review the Auditor General's reports, but the environment committee has other mandates as well. That explains some of the reasons why our target wasn't hit.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

The same report says that your office met only four of 13 targets in office administration. Does your office have a plan to improve this?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Again, to answer your question, I will just ask you what you are referring to. Do you have the page number maybe?