Public Accounts Committee on March 11th, 2021

[Karen Hogan]

I don't believe that we have that dollar amount. A lot of that would be forward looking projections. Perhaps the Parliamentary Budget Officer can assist with that.

Let's turn to Glenn and see what he can add to the dialogue.

[Glenn Wheeler]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm on my third set of headphones, so hopefully people can hear me this time.

To our knowledge, there's no overall assessment of the total cost to fix this issue. As the Auditor General has mentioned, the government has provided a lot of funding in recent years to address—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm going to stop there. I'll be satisfied with the fact that in taking on this program, nobody has yet come up with a number about what can solve this. It's very problematic. It seems like everybody is on the process and on the outcomes. That is an ongoing problem with this government.

I want to get back to the fact that there is no regulatory regime to ensure access to safe water in first nations communities that provides legal, binding-force protections. Is that correct?

[Karen Hogan]

An act was put in place, but not the underlying regulations.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I can't understand how when people are drafting legislation for something this serious, they talk about these processes and they make these announcements, but there's no actual binding nature to these agreements.

Are there recommendations coming from your office that would address these shortfalls? This seems to be, first and foremost and going back to my time as a Hamilton city councillor, the most significant piece.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Give a very short answer, please, Ms. Hogan.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Don't even worry about it because I'm definitely going to come back to it in the second round.

Staff, feel free to go to find that answer. I'll come back to it in my two and a half minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Green.

We will now move to our second round of questioning.

You have five minutes, Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Good morning, Ms. Hogan. It's always a pleasure to welcome you to the committee.

Mr. Green, I agree wholeheartedly with what you said about the importance of the report on drinking water. However, you will understand that, given what happened in Lac-Mégantic, the report having to do with rail safety is equally important to me.

Ms. Hogan, since you released your reports, I have had the opportunity to speak with people in my riding, people in Lac-Mégantic. Imagine if those people were made aware of one of your statements:

I am very concerned that [...] eight years after our last audit, there is still much left to do to improve the oversight of rail safety in Canada.

I note that this audit, conducted in June 2013, predated the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, which occurred in July.

Ms. Hogan, the Standing Committee on Transportation, Infrastructure and Communities had the opportunity to go to Lac-Mégantic and do a study on this. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has done reports. A lot of analysis has been done.

What can we do to prevent issues like this from coming up in your next report? It is unacceptable for the public to hear things like this from the Auditor General of Canada, and for the public to see that there is so much more to be done.

I would like you to give me a path forward because, frankly, I don't know how to approach this anymore. I have done everything in my power, but I don't want to read statements like that anymore.

[Karen Hogan]

I thank you for the question.

I also want to mention that the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development tabled a report just before mine on the transportation of dangerous goods. He raised the same concerns that we are raising in this report. That is why Transport Canada officials need to ensure that the actions they take are effective. It is important to do a lot of monitoring in this regard. But they do not know if these activities are the ones that will actually improve rail safety. If they don't measure the effectiveness of the measures that are put in place, how can they know if they are the right ones or not?

We also have to agree that any mode of transportation is dangerous, including rail. It is inevitable; there will always be accidents. However, we must be able to avoid them or ensure that we have done everything in our power to improve safety.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

This is an accountability issue, Ms. Hogan. When you say “they”, you are talking about the people at Transport Canada. That is very broad.

Have you established who at Transport Canada is responsible for the lack of follow-up on these recommendations?

[Karen Hogan]

That is an odd question. Transport Canada does the safety oversight, but they also work with the railroads. It is the railroads, as well as the transportation companies, that use the safety systems.

The deputy minister of any department is responsible for all actions taken by his or her department. As far as the sector and individuals, I am not aware of that. I could ask the senior director, but I don't know if that would add anything to the discussion.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Personally, I think so, because there may be too many people involved right now. When you're not directly responsible, you're not responsible at all, if I can put it that way.

It would be nice if we could clearly identify the chain of command with respect to following up on recommendations. We cannot allow another tragedy like Lac-Mégantic to happen again. We cannot allow other tragedies. We must do everything we can to achieve zero risk, even though we know it is impossible. We all know that, Ms. Hogan.

As a result of these findings, which are still quite harsh with regard to Transport Canada, do you intend to follow up quickly on the recommendations made in this report—not a late follow-up as in the case of the 2013 report—to find out if any means have been implemented to verify that Transport Canada is following up on the recommendations and to see if they are having any direct consequences, whether negative or positive?

[Karen Hogan]

One of the new things we're going to be doing soon is following up on several audits, exactly as you mention. This is not to produce a lengthy report, but rather to do more follow-up on recommendations. Our intent is to include the reports we just filed.

Sometimes a topic is so important that it needs to be looked at again. We will then continue to do our follow-up. The department and its internal audit group should also follow up on our recommendations. We will continue to work with the department.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to Mr. Blois for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to Ms. Hogan for being here today. Obviously you have a lot of very useful information for this committee.

I'm going to start on the national shipbuilding strategy. Being a member of Parliament from Nova Scotia, this program is extremely important. I know a lot of individuals and constituents I represent who are involved in the shipyard work in Halifax. Canada has a shipbuilding history, but these types of contracts obviously only come in certain types of decades along the way.

I'm curious. You mentioned there were some delays in the first two ships that were built. Is some of that tied to the fact that we have to build capacity in some of these industries, that it is not a continuation...? There's not always these types of contracts that require this type of skill set and this type of procurement happening year over year, so to speak.

[Karen Hogan]

Thank you for the question about the shipbuilding strategy.

It's important to start off, I think, with the three objectives of this strategy: It was to renew the fleet in a timely and affordable way, to create and support our marine sector and also to generate economic benefits for the country.

Some of what we saw in the delays was a bit of a shared responsibility between the department and the government, knowing exactly the design they wanted and figuring that out, and then production on the side of the shipyards. The intent was to make sure there wasn't a boom and bust sort of cycle.

That's why focusing in on target state.... Having shipyards meet their target state is really important, especially as deadlines move away. It's a way of measuring progress and value. The departments did not do a good job on following up on that target state, and still the shipyards have not met it yet. That's essential.

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

Ms. Hogan, can I ask how the time frames for the ships being built in the first place are benchmarked? Are the benchmarks judged versus how Canada or other jurisdictions have done this in the past? How do we actually establish the benchmarks and time frames?

[Karen Hogan]

Are you talking about time frames with respect to how long it takes to build a ship?

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

Yes. You mentioned there have been a few delays. I know, for example, in Halifax it could be eight or nine months in your charts and your reports, but how are those initial benchmarks and time frames even established?

[Karen Hogan]

I'm going to ask Nick Swales, who is a principal, if he can provide that extra detail for you. I don't know that off the top of my head, so I'm going to see if Nick can add that.

[Nicholas Swales, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

There were no benchmarks established for the initial ships, so those schedules were really the result of the commitments made by the shipyards.

We do go on to point out that in the ships projects for the future, there has been more benchmarking. There has been a use of third party experts and also the actual time it has taken to say what is a reasonable time frame to build such ships.

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

What I'm hearing is that as we start to get more capacity and understanding, this will tighten up and allow the company and the department to have faster timelines.

I do want to go on to another topic, but I have one quick question around maintenance. In the report you talked about, there was some deferred maintenance also being done. Does that have any interplay with...? Obviously, the national shipbuilding strategy is dealing with new builds. Was there some maintenance that could have delayed some of these timelines, or is that unrelated?

[Karen Hogan]

I think I might let Nick tackle that one. I just want to say that I think the department and the shipyards agreed that their timelines were not very realistic, and they believe they have established more realistic timelines with some of the actions they took during our audit.

Nick, I don't know if you can answer the member's question.