Public Accounts Committee on March 11th, 2021

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Other than missing data from some departments due to delays, are there other things that cause your audit reports to be delayed?

[Karen Hogan]

No, not really, other than the fact that the demand to audit all COVID-19-related programs is immense. For this reason, our response to the motion will be phased over several years.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I want to make sure I understand, Ms. Hogan. You said that four reports would be tabled soon.

In total, how many reports on COVID-19 are expected to be delivered by June 1, 2021?

[Karen Hogan]

I believe we will try to deliver some in May as well, but it is very difficult for me to give the exact number.

There will certainly be some later in the year. I can get back to you on that, if you want, but I know that there will also be audits related to COVID-19 in 2022 and 2023.

Maybe we could keep you updated on the number of audits.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

In your opinion, Ms. Hogan, are there any reports that are not already scheduled, but would be essential and should be addressed by the committee?

[Karen Hogan]

Are you talking about reports you should be studying?

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I'm talking about reports that we should request from your office and then review.

[Karen Hogan]

People in our office and people on the committee have already had a discussion about this.

We will be looking at the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit, the implementation of immunization, as well as a lot of programs related to the pandemic. We have no shortage of topics.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

That's fine.

[Karen Hogan]

All we need is time.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Earlier, I touched on...

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

We will now move on to Mr. Green for six minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you for that. I want to take a step back to the previous section. I didn't get a chance to do so, and I think it's important every now and again that we take a step back and do it, because in the audit world, no news is good news. When you have a department or agency that comes through without any juice or anything spicy, it is overlooked.

I want to go back to your opening remarks in the last section to note that in the special examination of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, you were pleased to report that there were no significant deficiencies in corporate management practices or in the management of outreach and awareness activities during the period.

I want to take a moment to welcome, I believe their new ED, Mohammed Hashim, who is incredible. I'll share with you that his work in the surveys on online hate have played a role, I think, in helping Canadians better understand what online hate looks like in Canada. I think that's valuably important.

I never want to miss the opportunity to sing praise in this committee and to take a step back to do so, because I often come off as pretty agitated in thought on many topics. With this particular agency, however, I think we're definitely going down the right track. I want to take a moment just to note that: well done to that particular foundation.

I want now to segue into your comments that, having secured your permanent funding, you are proactively hiring additional diverse and qualified professionals.

Can you take a moment to explain to us what steps you are taking within your department to do so and how you're committed to the outcomes and not just the process of diversity, equity and inclusion?

[Karen Hogan]

Thank you for the question. I may turn to Kim Leblanc at some point, if she should want to add to this, if I forget a few of the things in the concrete actions we're taking to focus on outcomes.

We look at our employment equity distribution. In my mind it is just the minimum that we need to meet. We need to overshoot that minimum.

I recognize that we're doing a great job in our staff levels across the office. We still have some work to do; not every group is well represented. For sure, we have some work to do in the indigenous community. We have some very targeted outreach that we're doing there. I'm sure Madame Leblanc could add comment on this.

I recognize that we need to do better when it comes to our management level and that we have to work on it. We're in the middle of a hiring or promotion process at the principal level in our office. We're looking to certain lists that the government has available of diverse populations to look at, to try to address some of that process.

We're definitely focused on the outcome. It's definitely something I keep asking our hiring managers and our HR team about.

Kim, do you want to add a few more things that might help address the member's question?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Kim, with specificity, can you also add what the results of your GBA+ were, as applied to the OAG's governance structures?

[Kimberly Leblanc, Principal, Human Resources, Office of the Auditor General]

Hello, members of the committee. I'm pleased to talk about equity, diversity and inclusion.

One comment I might make is that there is a lot of dynamic dialogue with senior management. They all agreed to sign the anti-racism and discrimination statement. There is thus huge commitment on the senior executive side of things.

When we talk about outcomes, Mr. Green, it is interesting. We've just started our journey in awareness. When it comes to diversity and inclusion across the organization, we're into many awareness education activities, and when it comes to recruitment, many of our employees are actually ambassadors. That has been very helpful, because we've been able to recruit in the four employment equity groups this last year.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

This is great news, and I'll share with you why. You will recall that in the non-partisan work of this committee we ensured, when we talked about the “+”, that we added the identify factor—such as race, ethnicity, religion, age, mental and physical disability—in the performance audits. I think that's a huge step. I'm hopeful that through your learning and applying it to your own department, you're also going to be committed to using it more frequently in your performance audits.

I'll thus put the question to you, Ms. Hogan. Is that a commitment? I see a nod, but just to reiterate the good work of the committee and your commitment to this, will you go on the record today and say that indeed this will now become part of the process that you employ across your audits?

[Karen Hogan]

Absolutely. In terms of our recent hiring practices, I want to address two issues. About 44% of the individuals we've hired have self-identified as visible minorities. Also, absolutely GBA+ and SDGs are things that I have tasked one of the assistant auditor generals with making sure are included or considered in every single audit. Some audits lend themselves more easily to that—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Right.

[Karen Hogan]

—but we are definitely going to start looking not only at how the government considers it—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

How do you demand race-based desegregated data? I apologize, but I have 10 seconds. How do you do that?

[Karen Hogan]

Well, we're going to ask for it. I'm not sure we're always going to find it, but we're definitely going to start the dialogue and keep the pressure on the departments that we audit.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you, Mr. Green.

We will now go to our second round of questioning. It's a five-minute round, starting with Mr. Webber.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to go along the same line Mr. Green was on about the new staffing, Ms. Hogan, and your FTEs, your full-time equivalents. Of course, you mentioned you want to get up to about 737 for the 2021-22 year.

Because of this pandemic, everyone is working at home, and there is certainly a move to have more workers work from home in the future. Are you still maintaining the office space that you've had since last February while investing in IT to have people work from home? I'm just curious to know what percentage of your staff also works at home right now. Are you having these new hires work out of their house, or are you adding more space for them in your offices?