Public Accounts Committee on May 11th, 2021

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

Thank you for your very candid response. I look forward to the audits that will address this issue. Based on our discussions over the past six months, I have no doubt that you'll take action.

Perhaps the deputy ministers had time to think about how they would respond to a similar question.

I want to ask Ms. Gillis the following question.

Ms. Gillis, you coordinate many activities at Infrastructure Canada. However, I would like to know whether you have applied GBA+ to some aspects of the investing in Canada plan.

Can you give us an idea of what you found in this analysis?

[Kelly Gillis]

Thank you for the question.

All new programs in the government require a comprehensive assessment and GBA+. This is mandatory.

When we look at infrastructure in and of itself in some of the programs we're funding, we know they're supporting vulnerable populations. For example, public transit is one of the largest areas of infrastructure investment through the Investing in Canada plan. We know that essential workers and women are more apt to take public transit.

Those are some of the things we take into consideration as we're looking at the types of investments and the types of programming we're investing in. It is a very important consideration.

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

Can you share some of the results of this analysis?

[Kelly Gillis]

Do you want me to do so now?

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

It has been three years since this analysis should have been applied to Canadian government programs. I think that most programs have been analyzed by the Office of the Auditor General. There has been enough time to learn from this and make findings.

Can you provide some examples, other than public transportation, which you've already talked about?

[Kelly Gillis]

The people in rural communities and northern Canada need the infrastructure investments. We've invested in connectivity projects to provide high-speed Internet access. These projects are very important. They give people the ability to access education and, in this situation, to go about their daily business.

We're also investing in recreational and cultural infrastructure. The goal is to give people access to the public services that they need.

Lastly, I want to mention our investments in areas such as access to safe and clean drinking water in remote areas.

We know that is very important, and we've been focusing a lot on waste-water facilities in areas where it's important for our communities to have fundamental clean access to infrastructure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Ms. Gillis.

We'll move on to Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge all the witnesses here today.

My first question is for Ms. Hogan.

Good morning, Ms. Hogan, and welcome back.

You were asked for a report following the passage of a motion on January 29, 2020. I appreciate the insight gained from your expertise and your office's expertise. To be honest, I think that if you weren't here to keep an eye on things, I would be even more concerned than I am now. I'm amazed at the inertia that can be found in the federal government. I would even say that the findings in your report are quite troubling. I want to repeat the adage that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

I can see that departments, crown corporations and a variety of organizations are slow to provide the information that you need to complete the audit mandate given to you by Parliament.

What can you tell the committee about your issues in this area? Can you think of any examples to provide some context?

[Karen Hogan]

One major issue that I want to point out following the completion of this audit is the horizontal programs. This program involves 21 federal organizations, including departments, crown corporations and regional development agencies. When you have a program of this magnitude, usually one department is responsible for it. In this case, the department is Infrastructure Canada.

As I said in my message to Parliament in March, we've seen this issue before. We often hear departments say that, when you have a horizontal program, if the lead department doesn't have the necessary authority, it's very difficult to force deputy ministers in other departments to adhere to the objectives and meet all the needs and requirements of a horizontal program. We've seen that in this case. This shows the importance of properly determining an accountability process at the start of a horizontal program, and of ensuring that the lead department has the necessary authority to report comprehensively.

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

Thank you for these clarifications, Ms. Hogan.

You also noted in your report that Infrastructure Canada failed to show that its investing in Canada plan is on track to achieve its objectives. I find this extremely troubling. We're talking about billions of dollars, and I would even say $188 billion. Despite the talk of senior officials about horizontal control of spending, I think that nonetheless you're no closer to stating with certainty that these huge amounts will be allocated in an equitable, fair, diligent and even rigorously controlled manner.

Ms. Hogan, do you think that we can fully investigate the entire program in the near future, or will we have to get used to the idea that another government fiasco is on the horizon?

[Karen Hogan]

There's a great deal of information on the outputs of a program. We can see a detailed expense summary. However, as a result of our recommendation, I hope that Infrastructure Canada can improve its accountability. It's really important to not just talk about outputs, but to talk about outcomes and progress in achieving program objectives. It's important to be able to improve the process in order to step back and assess whether the targets in the plan have actually been met.

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

Thank you again for these clarifications, Ms. Hogan.

I noticed in your report that there was no breakdown by province, particularly for Quebec. I must say that this is unfortunate. The parliamentary budget officer points out in all his reports that Quebec has the longest approval times for infrastructure projects and the most delays. Why didn't your office do a breakdown by province?

[Karen Hogan]

When we saw the scope of the audit, we wanted to respond to the motion and show that there had been progress in achieving the goals of the plan, not look at the plan by region. I would encourage you to ask the department and check its website. During our audit, I noticed that there was a map of Canada. You can see where certain projects are located. This may address your concerns.

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

I'd like to come back to a statement in your speaking notes, Ms. Hogan.

Paragraph 9 states, “The issues affecting the investing in Canada plan are not new. We have seen similar problems in many past audits…”.

As I understand it, you made a recommendation, and the department accepted it.

Can we take further steps to ensure that we really put a lid on the issue and truly move ahead with structuring infrastructure programs for our communities?

[Karen Hogan]

In that paragraph—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Could we have a very short answer, Ms. Hogan? I'm sorry.

[Karen Hogan]

No worries.

In that paragraph, I'm emphasizing that it's a horizontal program and that the difficulties of reporting comprehensively on such a program are not new. We see this type of difficulty in sustainable development projects and at Indigenous Services Canada. The government should address this issue generally.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to Mr. Bachrach for six minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Actually, it's Mr. Green, Chair.

I know you guys had a lot of fun with my colleague, Taylor, from Skeena—Bulkley Valley, but I am back, from the unceded Algonquin territories here in Ottawa and, of course, proudly representing Hamilton Centre.

Some pretty revealing questions were posed, beginning in section 9, at paragraph 9.30, which talked about the legacy funding and how it was not “integrated into the plan” and how the horizontal reporting framework “required reporting only for Phase 1 and Phase 2 programs, while legacy programs continued to operate without explicitly aligning with the plan's objectives, expected results, or themes”. It also said, “The legacy programs, which represent almost half of the total $188-billion commitment, were therefore not included in the supplementary table on the horizontal initiative.”

My question is, why would these legacy programs be included if they were essentially being conducted and reported completely separately? That's probably for one of the staffers, because I don't know that Ms. Hogan would have that answer.

[Kelly Gillis]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

As Ms. Hogan mentioned, there are three different components to the plan.

In the legacy programs, which were the programs that were in existence before the plan was created, continued investment had not been made with those particular programs that ultimately were serving the overall objective of economic growth. If I give one great example from our programming, it's the gas tax program.

You can speak to any community across Canada: The gas tax program is a really important initiative. It is an upfront transfer payment, so it's not an application-based program whereby municipalities have to apply for their particular projects in advance. It's $2.2 billion that flows through provinces and territories to communities, to allow them to invest in things like connectivity—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm sorry. My apologies. I really have to get to the heart of the question. If I could, please, I have a supplementary to that, because I'm not so much interested in the talking points as I am in figuring out why in 2019 there was an internal evaluation of the plan conducted by Infrastructure Canada that also found gaps in reporting on legacy funding. However, the issue had not been resolved at the time of the audit, as per Ms. Hogan.

Your own internal audits have twice identified the failure to report legacy programs as a problem within the investing in Canada plan. Why has the leadership decided that it's not worth addressing this significant issue?

[Kelly Gillis]

What we have done is to incorporate them into various programs like our funding table. Our legacy programs are noted. In our geospatial map, where the data is available, we've included it. We have included it as an overall economic driver because it is an important investment in infrastructure.

On the exact modalities and the framework, as the Auditor General noted, the framework doesn't align perfectly, and we do not want to recreate or redo the gas tax program into a new framework, because that would undermine certainty and investments and undo necessarily binding agreements. We know that the program is coming up for renewal in 2024, so we have an opportunity to address some of the reporting requirements that we might want as a requirement for future reporting.

In the meantime, we are looking at the horizontal table right now, with the Auditor General's recommendation, to see how we can realign it to fit the horizontal reporting issues that have been addressed regarding legacy programs. We have already started to address reporting regarding legacy programs in our other reports that have been made public.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Why then, through you, Madam Chair, would the federal partners not be required to align their reporting requirements with Infrastructure Canada's requirements? How confident can we be that Infrastructure Canada has a grip on these programs, when they aren't even collecting the right data?

[Christiane Fox]

Maybe I could speak a little about Indigenous Services Canada, to answer the question about why we aren't tracking legacy programs.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If I could, respectfully, I'd like to go back to the previous witness, because I want it to be more broad, and I know that Indigenous Services will have a specificity that is not broadly applied to the other departments.