Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 27th, 2020

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

We don't.

[Sylvain Ricard]

Maybe you could repeat your question. Maybe I will—

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

You met only four of 13 targets in office administration. Do you have a plan going forward to improve the office administration, particularly looking at ensuring a bilingual work environment and having employees meet language standards?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Just give me a minute here.... We're referring to the 2018-19 departmental results report. I'm in the report at exhibit 9, where there are perhaps a dozen targets. So I'm not sure which one you're referring to, but there's a dozen of them.

If I go through them quickly, there is one, for example, where the target was 100%, and we were at 99%. For transparency, we're not rounding up. We say we're not meeting the target because we're at 99%. That was four contracts out of 434 contracts that were not compliant. An example of that, going by memory again, could be that we have a contractor who goes beyond the contract in terms of time on an audit. Let's say we contract out someone at work, and he goes over by 10 hours—that makes it a non-compliant contract. That's an example of non-compliance. That is something we are always monitoring, but using that one example, we were not too far from being on target.

I'm not sure if I'm answering your question.

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

It says here that there were only four.

What about the others?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Let me turn to another one here. We have one on internal service standards, which is, for example, the IT system being up and running all the time or not out of service for more than, let's say, four hours for a key system. So on that one, we had one IT system that was off for more than 48 hours. I'm going by memory here. I think it was due to a supplier not being able to support the system.

We have a number of targets that were met. For this one here, the target was not met, for “completion of the Office's annual strategic priority projects”. We had some IT projects in there, so I gather that it was linked to our resource issue, that we could not focus enough on the project on a continuing basis. For example, on the project I was referring to, the DOS one, we ended up advancing that project in parallel with other projects. So those are the types of results you get at the end of the day.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Yip. That's all the time we have.

We're going to move over to Mr. Uppal, and then we'll be back to Mr. Fergus.

Mr. Uppal, go ahead for five minutes.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton Mill Woods, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We've heard quite clearly about the budget shortfall that you have currently, the request that you've made and the need for independent financing.

I want to ask you maybe to go beyond financial concerns that you have and to look at what else you would need to make your job easier or to be able to provide better information. Do you need better access to information or a better process? Are there any other requests that you have of the government to be able to do that?

[Sylvain Ricard]

I'm going to ask Mr. Hayes to add here. I'll give one little example that we've been discussing over the years.

I referred earlier to the special examinations that we do once every 10 years per Crown corporation. Not all Crown corporations are the same size or bring the same risk, but given the legislative requirement, we have to do them one by one. I'll give you an example.

There are some Crown corporations that are in the same business. Maybe a different approach with special exams could be that we do all of those at the same time and that we only cover one key element of their business. Let's take museums. They have to protect their collections, so maybe the key thing in a museum is about protecting the collection. Rather than doing museum after museum after museum, we could do all the museums together in terms of how, in that business, we're doing in protecting the collection. That's one little example of something that we've been reflecting on.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton Mill Woods, AB]

Sorry, just on that note, where would the change need to happen so you'd be able to do that?

[Andrew Hayes]

What Mr. Ricard is talking about would be along the lines of treating special exams like performance audit mandates. Currently it's not exactly set up that way. We have defined criteria in the Financial Administration Act that we have to address in a special exam. If we had a bit more flexibility to determine what was important to audit in particular corporations, I think that would add value for both the corporations and Parliament.

I'll answer a couple of other elements of your question. On access to information, I would say that we do not have an access to information problem now. We did in the last Parliament and, with the support of this committee, we were able to resolve it with the government. The government was a willing participant in that, and to date there have been no further difficulties with respect to access to information. So that was a very positive outcome for us.

In terms of a big ask, if I can put it that way, you'll see a common thread in our audit reports about data quality. The quality of the data leads to important decisions, and it informs the way that departments will operate. It's also important for us. Quality data we can deal with a lot more efficiently.

[Sylvain Ricard]

One thing we always need, when we issue a report, is for the public accounts committee to have hearings with the department and have the office present at the hearing. That would make a big difference. It's very useful that the departments are brought forward to have a fulsome discussion on the result of the audit.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton Mill Woods, AB]

On the quality of data, you've made these requests. Have you seen departments follow up on your recommendations? Have you seen improvements?

[Sylvain Ricard]

It doesn't quite work like that. That comes out of the performance audits we conduct. Too often we find that there are issues with data quality. Sometimes that is driven by legacy systems that don't allow for capturing the data in a way that is very useful. Once we table the report, there's an action plan prepared and submitted by the entity to the public accounts committee. That's the type of impact this committee can have, by having the organization come forward with action plans. On that element, it makes a difference.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Fergus, the floor is yours for five minutes.

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

Once again, Mr. Ricard, thank you very much for your questions.

I would like to come back to an issue that two of my opposition colleagues raised, which is that of Phoenix. You know that we have begun a process to replace the Phoenix payroll system, given its well-known difficulties and failures.

Have you had a chance to start any checks or audits on the new generation of the system that will replace Phoenix someday?

[Sylvain Ricard]

I cannot answer this question in detail because this audit has not been completed.

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

All right.

[Sylvain Ricard]

So we can't talk about it, but we're working on it.

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

Should we expect a report this year or next year on the new payroll system?

[Martin Dompierre]

The audit is expected to be tabled in Parliament in the fall of 2020.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Dompierre. It's very useful.

I'd like to go back to what you suggested regarding the Phoenix payroll system.

Do you feel that progress has been made on the recommendations contained in your report last year? Have public servants learned any lessons from what you raised and adapted their system accordingly?

[Sylvain Ricard]

The only progress we have noted since the audit is the action plan that was prepared for the Standing Committee on Public Accounts by the organization because a follow-up audit was not conducted. The only work we are doing in relation to the Phoenix payroll system is the work we are doing as part of the audit of the government's consolidated financial statements.

As I mentioned earlier, in the pre-holiday commentary we made observations and comments on the results of this work during the financial statement audits. Essentially, the results are the same as those of the previous year.

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

Very well.

Last year, in your Departmental Performance Report, you indicated that you had also completed 89 audits. Is that a number that has remained stable over the years?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Three or four figures come to mind because we have several fields of activity. Each year, we do about 90 financial statement audits and about 14 performance audits. We used to do about 25 of those audits a year before. Also, I think Ms. Hogan mentioned earlier that we do three to five special examinations per year.

Therefore, with the exception of performance audits, the number of our other audits has actually remained quite stable for a fair number of years.

Five or six ad hoc financial audit mandates were added, including Trans Mountain, a health agency in one of the territories, and the Infrastructure Bank of Canada. These mandates were given to us with no additional funding, however, which contributed to the pressure we felt.

However, beyond the number of our mandates, the increase in expenses within an organization increases our workload. Although the number of organizations does not change, the increase in their expenses automatically affects our work.